
INIQUITY 

IN HIGH PLACES 



AS REVEALED 
IN THE 



American- Spanish- Filipino 
Wars of 1 898, 1 899 



AND 



SUBSEQUENT YEARS 



BY 

HENRY CLAY KINNE 

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 




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INIQUITY 

IN HIGH PLACES 



AS REVEALED 
IN THE 



American- Spanish— Filipino 
Wars of 1 898, 1 899 



AND 



SUBSEQUENT YEARS 



BY 

HENRY CLAY KINNE 

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 






LIBRARY of CCNGflESiJ 
I wo Copies Htcwvat 

JUN 6 1908 

uu«yi^!" cnuy 

«««, A_ XXc. M». 
COPY 8. 

Copyright, 1908 

By 

HENRY CLAY KINNE 



0\ 









Pugnacity a Primary and Essential Trait 
of all Animals, Man Included. 

The Evolution of Pugnacity. 

Transport a block of granite from the earth and 
leave it upon the surface of the moon, and it might 
remain there for unnumbered ages without any ap- 
preciable change in its substance or appearance. 
Take a bright sword-blade or a polished steel mirror 
and leave it upon the moon and it would undergo no 
alteration in the lapse of any period of Time. As 
there is no air or water in the moon there is nothing 
to oxidize or corrode the surface of the steel, and it 
would therefore remain as immune from deteriora- 
tion or decomposition as if sealed up in a vacuum. 
But take a plant or an animal from the earth to the 
moon and the plant or animal would immediately per- 
ish. All organic life, whether animal or vegetable, 
requires for its development and maintenance the con- 
stant absorption and assimilation of external elements. 
Air and water and food are indispensable. And it 
follows as a matter of course that the organism 
must have the faculty of selecting the needful 
elements in order to supply its wants. The plant 
sends its roots through the soil and, by a cunning 
chemistry that no man can imitate and no man can 
fathom, extracts therefrom the materials which give 
the beautiful tints to the flower, which give the deli- 



4 Iniquity in High Places 

cious flavor to the fruits, which give the nutritious 
qualities to the grain. And not less mysterious and 
wonderful are the processes by which the digestive 
organs of the animal draw from its food the sub- 
stances required for the building up of the body and 
the repairing of its wastes. And it further appears 
that as a matter of absolute necessity the animal organ- 
ism must not only have the faculty but also the dis- 
position to appropriate external elements. If there 
were no sensation of hunger the animal would not 
eat. If there were no sensation of thirst the animal 
would not drink. The disposition to appropriate for 
the use of self is the indispensable and eternal ground- 
work of all animal existence. It is also the eternal 
groundwork of eternal strife in the animal kingdom. 
The animal organism, inspired by selfishness and 
greed, and eager to gratify its appetites and desires, 
finds itself surrounded and jostled by a multitude of 
other organisms, all actuated by the same motives 
and striving for the same ends. 

The moment two primitive animal organisms make 
a simultaneous attempt to appropriate one and the 
same article of food there arises a conflict of inter- 
ests which speedily culminates in a resort to violence 
and force. The constant recurrence of these scenes 
of violence would naturally and inevitably develop a 
spirit of pugnacity, a disposition to fight. And as the 
animal organism in the process of evolution rose to a 
higher plane of life this spirit of pugnacity would 
grow with its growth and strengthen with its strength 



Iniquity in High Places 5 

until it became an essential and inseparable part of 
its being. It is probable that as soon as the animal 
organism became conscious of its own existence and 
of the existence of other animal organisms the strug- 
gle between them commenced. In the order of devel- 
opment of the faculties of the animal organism the 
disposition to fight must have followed very closely 
upon the heels of the disposition to eat. Even if 
from the dawn of creation to the present time all the 
animals of the world had subsisted upon nothing but 
vegetable food a spirit of pugnacity would neverthe- 
less have been developed. As in the mad and selfish 
struggle to escape from a burning theater people will 
fight and strike down and trample each other to 
death so in the rush of animals for food they would 
attack and drive and rob each other of the coveted 
prize. 

But animals do not subsist solely on vegetable food. 
Tt would seem to be as natural for animals to devour 
each other as to devour the herbage that covers the 
plains. The first animal germ that absorbed the first 
vegetable cell may in turn have been the subject of 
absorption by animal germ No. 2. Beasts of the for- 
est and birds of the air and fish of the sea subsist 
largely if not wholly by destroying and devouring the 
lower and weaker members of the animal kingdom. 
This condition of things intensifies the strife that 
pervades the entire animal world, and makes the life 
of the animal one of constant attack or constant at- 
tempts at defense where defense is possible. Pug- 



6 Iniquity in High Places 

nacity, therefore, the disposition to fight, the disposi- 
tion to violence, the disposition to kill, becomes a uni- 
versal trait. Its manifestations are visible on every 
hand. The worm will turn when trod upon. Break 
open the egg- of the snapping turtle and the infant 
reptile therein enshrined will meet you with open jaws. 
The barefoot boy who jumps upon the anthill knows 
that if he stands still for a moment a swarm of the 
pugnacious little insects will fasten themselves upon 
his cuticle with relentless grip. The bee and the scor- 
pion have their sting. The serpent has his hollow 
fang and his sack of venom. The rooster has his 
sharp spur with which to strike his opponent. The 
wild boar has his strong tusk growing at right angles 
to his upper jaw with which to disembowel his antag- 
onist by a side stroke of his head. The bull has his 
formidable horn wherewith to gore his rival. Beaks 
and claws and teeth are universal weapons. 

The fact that animals are furnished with natural 
weapons shows that there was an antecedent necessity 
for the use of weapons. All the members of the ani- 
mal's body are developed in response to natural wants. 
Thus the animal needs nutrition. Therefore it has 
teeth for mastication and a stomach for digestion of 
food. The animal needs locomotion. Therefore it 
has legs to walk on land, wings to fly through air, 
fins to swim in the sea. The animal needs vision. 
It therefore has eyes. The animal's blood needs 
oxygenation. It therefore has lungs. Looking back 
from effect to cause we may say that the fact that 



Iniquity in High Places 7 

the animal is provided with natural weapons proves, 
to make use of common language, that animals are 
born to fight, that animals are expected and intended 
to fight. This must be true of animal life wherever 
found. Traverse the realms of space and visit every 
one of the millions of heavenly bodies within the range 
of telescopic vision and wherever you find a world 
teeming with diversified animal life you will find the 
same condition of affairs as prevails on this planet. 
Universal greed begets universal strife. 

Howard A. Burrell, editor of the Washington 
(Iowa) Press, in his issue of May 22, 1901, discourses 
on this subject with sound philosophy and in pithy 
phrase : 

"Dog Eat Dog. 

"If living creatures were to exist at all, one cannot 
" doubt the wisdom of the Creator in arranging that 
" they should prey on each other, race living on race. 
" How could it be managed in any other way than 
" in this cruel, bloody fashion, if their propagation 
" was to be as rapid and prodigal as we see it is ? 
" One bird must live on another kind of bird, one 
" bug on another, the bird's claws and beak against 
" insects, one animal eating another, snakes after 
" frogs, toads and birds, hogs after snakes, Ladybug 
" feasting on San Jose scale, and so on all down the 
"line, ad infinitum, chew, chew, chew! It must be 
" that way, or the world would speedily come to an 
" end bv being-- eaten out of house and home. 



8 Iniquity in High Places 

"And the same tendency in men, one preying on 
" another, all gouging, cheating, stealing, sponging, 
" destroying ; burglars, thieves, freebooters, pirates, 
" parasites, swindlers, gamblers, murderers ; lying in 
" horse trades, deceiving in love, betraying trusts, 
" every fellow for himself and devil take the hind- 
" most. Expensive human races ; one race living on 
"another; raiding, conquering, enslaving, stealing 
" provinces, exterminating the native possessors. 

"Men and animals are alike. Men belongs to nat- 
" ural history as truly as the inferior animals ; they 
" hunger and thirst and must rest and sleep, alike ; 
" digestion the same in each and all. The same sel- 
" fish, brutal instincts in all. 

"Right here, Christianity — the real thing, not the 
" bastard, perverted thing so-called sometimes, but 
" which, in the guise of ecclesiasticism, is as rapacious 
" and cruel and wicked as any other human institu- 
" tion, — right here real Christianity steps in to make 
" a moral cleavage in the animal kingdom by differ- 
" entiating man from the beast, changing his base 
" instincts into benevolent intention, and inspiring him 
" to lead a righteous, instead of a predatory, life. We 
" all know many people, here and there, who have 
" been thus changed, but the ameliorating effect on 
" nations, as such, is hardly visible. The conquest of 
" India, the carving up of Africa, the threatened dis- 
" memberment of China, the treatment of our Indians 
" and Negroes, — all these social and political and 
" military phenomena show nothing but fangs and 



Iniquity in High Places 9 

" claws. There is many an Individual Christian, but 
" the Christian Nation does not exist. Not one. In 
" its morals and 'applied Christianity' there is not one 
" that lives up to any standard of conduct or code of 
" ethics above those which prevail in the lair, the 
" swamp, the jungle, the veldt, the wilderness. The 
" earth is still the habitation of cruelty." 

In the opening acts of this horrid drama of chaos 
and bloody contention the germ of the human animal 
was launched upon its career, side by side with the 
germs of other animal forms, and presumably indis- 
tinguishable from them in powers and functions and 
characteristics. The human germ lived as other ani- 
mal germs lived, throve as other germs throve, devel- 
oped as others developed, fought as others fought, 
devoured as others devoured, propagated as others 
propagated, died as others died. For untold ages the 
human germ must have been in a condition of incip- 
ient, unfinished beasthood, probably cannibalistic, 
knowing nothing of the ties of kindred, yet possess- 
ing a pugnacity and a force that enabled it to hold its 
ground against the enemies that beset it on every side. 
But as millions upon millions of years rolled away 
the ceaseless workings of the law of differentiation 
wrought out results that we now witness. Man is 
still an animal. He is of earth, earthy. He is first 
cousin to the tiger, the wolf, the hyena, the hog. 
Every beastly trait of the brute creation is mirrored 
forth with more or less distinctness in man's nature. 
Man is a fisfhtingf animal. He strikes with his fists. He 



io Iniquity in High Places 

clinches and rolls upon the ground like a bulldog. 
He fastens his grasp upon the throat and throttles and 
strangles. He knocks out teeth. He gouges out eyes. 
He bites off noses. He tears off ears. His monkey- 
like prehensile power, his ability to use that wonder- 
ful mechanism, the hand, in grasping sticks and stones, 
renders it unnecessary f.or him to resort to a mode 
of fighting that would develop horns or tusks or 
spurs, or that would lengthen and harden his claws 
or strengthen and sharpen his teeth. 

But man is not wholly bestial. Upon the solid and 
everlasting substructure of his animalism there have 
been reared the towering walls and the lofty turrets 
and pinnacles of a higher and nobler nature. He is 
credited with intellectual perceptions and faculties 
that enable him to understand his position and sur- 
roundings in the universe. He is credited with moral 
perceptions that enable him to determine his relations 
and his line of duty to his fellow-man. He is cred- 
ited with spiritual perceptions and aspirations that ally 
him to his Creator. He has come up from the lower 
levels of the abyss of darkness in which he was born, 
and is now advancing on a pathway illumed by a 
radiance that is ever waxing brighter and clearer and 
purer. Whatever may be his individual shortcom- 
ings and backslidings the average man recognizes the 
fact that in all his relations and dealings with his fel- 
low-man his actions should be governed by the law 
of love and not by the law of brute force, — not by the 
law of the beast. The average man realizes and 



Iniquity in High Places n 

admits that the highest and purest earthly happiness 
is found in the possession and manifestation of a spirit 
of charity and humanity and fraternity and love. It 
is an age of benevolent impulse and beneficent deed. 
The human heart is a never-failing fountain of sym- 
pathy which overflows in behalf of the suffering 
wherever the suffering are to be found. A most noble 
philanthropy, keen and active, watches every nook and 
corner of the universe with Argus eyes, and with 
Briarean arms lays hold on every opportunity to min- 
ister to human wants and to mitigate human woes. It 
wipes out the bloody footprints of advancing armies ; 
it assuages the horrors of the pestilence that walketh 
at noonday ; it evicts and banishes the hollow-cheeked 
specter of famine ; it raises new roofs over the ashes 
of conflagrations ; it opens the doors of stately pal- 
aces to the deaf and the blind ; it fills the mouths of 
the children that are fatherless; it visits the couch 
of sickness with healing draughts ; it strikes the fetters 
from the limbs of the slave ; it cleanses and ventilates 
the prisoner's cell ; it smoothes the dying pauper's pil- 
low : it shields the poor sailor from the captain's lash. 
The model man of the day is one in whom the 
animal nature is overshadowed, overawed, restrained, 
subdued. The model man of the day counsels and 
cultivates peace and harmony and friendship and 
virtue and justice as the basis of all good and true 
society. The model man counsels and exercises pa- 
tience and forbearance in dealing with the foibles and 
weaknesses of his fellow-men. He governs his ac- 



12 Iniquity in High Places 

tions by the Golden Rule, "Whatsoever ye would that 
men should do unto you do ye even so to them." He 
returns good for evil. He gives the soft answer that 
turneth away wrath. When he is reviled he reviles 
not again. When assailed by approbrious epithet he 
does not deem it incumbent upon him to resort to 
shooting to vindicate his "honor." He does not mur- 
der his neighbor. He does not maltreat or beat or 
maim or mutilate his neighbor. He does not rob his 
neighbor of his possessions. In short, it may be said 
that while occasional outcroppings of the animal sub- 
stratum in human nature may be expected, never- 
theless the broad theory in regard to the duties which 
man owes to his fellow-man and to society is clearly 
understood and accepted and approved. 

We find, then, that in his social relations man has 
at least partially outgrown the pugnacity of the brute 
creation, and no longer countenances violence and 
bloodshed as a desirable accompaniment or incident 
of his daily life. But we shall further find that in 
his international, interracial, intertribal relations man 
is still a bloodthirsty beast. 



Bellicosity a Secondary and Derivative Trait 
Peculiar to the Human Animal, and Not Af- 
fecting the Brute Creation. 

The Evolution of Bellicosity. 

Bellicosity, the love of war, the disposition to wage 
war, can only pertain to intelligent beings. Who 



Iniquity in High Places 13 

ever heard of the buffalo over an area of a hundred 
thousand square miles combining to kill off all the 
elk and the deer? Who ever heard of the bear over 
an area of a hundred thousand square miles combin- 
ing to exterminate the wolves? Who ever heard of 
the lions over an area of a hundred thousand square 
miles combining to slaughter the tigers? Who ever 
heard of the elephants combining to wage war on the 
rhinoceroses ? 

War is beastliness aided and abetted and armed by 
intelligence. As the human animal for ages after its 
advent upon earth was nothing more nor less than a 
ferocious wild beast having no more intelligence than 
the brute creation, war, as we use the term, was 
impossible. The human animal, of course, like all 
other beasts of prey, was involved in ceaseless and 
sanguinary strife. It was constantly engaged in 
fighting and slaughtering and devouring other ani- 
mals. It was probably engaged in fighting and 
slaughtering and devouring its own species. But in 
all these deeds of violence the individual human ani- 
mal was an isolated unit. Its fighting was the spon- 
taneous outbreak of its inherent ferocity manifesting 
itself, as opportunity accidentally occurred, without 
plan or method or premeditation, just as the fighting 
of the grizzly bear or wild bull is without plan or 
method or premeditation. 

But the first glimmerings of intelligence were the 
precursor of a change. The ties of kindred began to 
exhibit strength. Father recognized son, brother rec- 



14 Iniquity in High Places 

ognized brother, relatives grouped themselves together 
and acted in unison and concert for attack or defense. 
Family relations expanded into tribal relations. 
Here were the faint and feeble beginnings of social 
evolution. Here was the forceful and vigorous begin- 
ning of war. It is probable that the very first mani- 
festation of human intelligence consisted in the form- 
ing of combinations among the naked savages living 
in caves and holes in the ground on one side of a 
river or mountain for the purpose of crossing that 
river or mountain in order to attack and kill the 
naked savages living in caves or holes in the ground 
on the opposite side. From that day to this the keen- 
est delight, the most intense, the most soul-absorbing 
delight of all mankind is found in slaughtering the 
people of another nation, race or tribe. A "glorious 
victory" invariably throws the people of any and every 
nation on earth into a paroxysm of uncontrollable 
joy. In all the interminable ages, reaching back be- 
yond human calculation, the sun has never made a 
single daily circuit around the earth without looking 
down upon the smoking ruins of human habitations 
and the rotting carcasses of the human slain. But 
the pioneers in this work of eternal bloodshed did not 
call it "vindicating the national honor." They did 
not call it "adding new glory to the flag." They did 
not call it "opening a field for the spread of the Gos- 
pel." They did not even call it "planting an out- 
post for the extension of commerce." The primeval 
human beast did not indulge in the elesrant circum- 



Iniquity in High Places 15 

locutionary phrase with which his descendants, our 
modern murderers, attempt to gloss over their iniquity. 
He simply killed. 

But the passion for war, the wickedest, the most 
horrible, the most destructive of all the passions that 
affect the human race in its collective capacity, is of 
natural evolution. All the powers and qualities and 
traits and tendencies of every member of every spe- 
cies of the animate creation are of natural evolution. 
Thus the lion and the lamb may have sprung from 
precisely similar primitive germs ; but as the one 
drifted into flesh-eating habits and the other into 
grass-eating there was a resulting difference between 
them in physical form and in temperament and dis- 
position. In the lion were developed jagged teeth 
and long, sharp-pointed, solid, powerful fangs for 
tearing his victim's flesh. In the lamb the front teeth 
were merely an even row of smooth nippers for crop- 
ping the green herbage, while his back teeth were 
equally plain molars for grinding the same. The feet 
of the lion were armed with sharp claws to assist in 
his work of destruction. The feet of the lamb were 
simply incased in a shell of horn to withstand the 
wear and tear of daily travel. In disposition the 
lamb was timid, mild, gentle, harmless, the lion was 
ferocious, bloodthirsty, merciless and destructive in 
the highest degree. Side by side and step by step 
with the development of the lion's fangs and the lion's 
claws came the development of the lion's ferocity as 
a natural and inevitable sequence of his mode of life. 



16 Iniquity in High Places 

It would seem to be a law of evolution that all ani- 
mals that subsist by slaughtering' other animals, all 
beasts and birds of prey, become fierce and cruel in 
disposition. The same rule must apply to man. All 
men and all races of men constantly engaged in shed- 
ding human blood acquire an appetite for human 
blood, a thirst for human blood, a taste for human 
blood. As the human animal when it had no more 
intelligence than the brute creation was simply a beast 
of prey it must have had the ferocity characteristic 
of all beasts of prey. That ferocity the human ani- 
mal carried over with it into the new era of dawning 
intelligence, and that ferocity, nursed and strength- 
ened and perpetuated by ceaseless, eternal warfare 
and bloodshed, has been handed down to the present 
time and is now the dominant, controlling factor in 
the relations that subsist between the different nations, 
races and tribes of men on earth. The military pup- 
pet of today is executing his deeds of death in the 
Philippine Islands in obedience to an impulse coming 
down the wires from the ghost of the ferocious human 
wild beast of millions and millions of years ago. 
Every professional soldier on earth, everything in 
uniform on land or sea, is a reminiscence or a re-in- 
carnation of primeval human gorillaism. 

When human animals developed intelligence enough 
to gather in families and groups and tribes each of 
these groups was confronted and surrounded by other 
groups of human animals, as greedy and ferocious and 
merciless and murderous as themselves. Here was 



Iniquity in High Places 17 

war at once. Here was war on every hand, — at every 
point of the compass. The cradle of the human race 
was everywhere hopelessly shrouded and darkened 
by an eternal cloud of war. The primitive savage 
was constantly engaged in planning an attack upon 
his foes or in preparing for defense against them. 
He never lay down to sleep except with his war club 
and his stone hatchet by his side, ready, when awak- 
ened by the war-whoop of the enemy, to spring to his 
feet and seize his weapons with an answering yell. 
He was haunted by a mortal dread of powerful hered- 
itary enemies living possibly at a distance of less than 
a day's journey. He was haunted by a relentless 
hate begotten of his mortal fear. He was possessed 
and stimulated by a quenchless thirst for blood begot- 
ten of his undying hate. As the human disposition 
was molded and shaped under these influences for 
countless ages every fiber and every atom, so to speak, 
of the human beart and human soul was permeated 
and saturated by a lust for human blood. 

We here insert another editorial from the Wash- 
ington (Iowa) Press: 

"Hunting. 

"Hunting is a survival from the stone age, if not 
" from an earlier period, — at any rate from an age 
" when men needed to hunt wild flesh for food and 
" for skins to clothe themselves withal. It was then 
" an occupation, a necessity, not a sport or a pastime, 
" as now. The passion got into human blood as an 



1 8 Iniquity in High Places 

" instinct, and survives. Men love the sport. It is 
" healthful, invigorating, as it gives hard exercise in 
" the open air, and the awful tire is wholesome. But 
" we need not pretend we hunt with the primitive 
" man's motives. We kill for the love of it. Armed 
" to the teeth by science and art, we give the other 
" fellow in fur or feathers or scales no show. When 
" early man had only a club or a stone, before he had 
" a bow and arrows and spear or hook, and had to 
" hunt for meat and clothes, or starve and freeze, he 
" was as often hunted as hunting, and it was a risky, 
" plucky business. Necessity justified the killing. It 
" was root, hog, or die. We do not need to hunt 
" now, but lots of men have sporting blood in them 
" still, and sally forth with deadly guns, dogs, horses, 
" boats, hooks, lines and flies, and wantonly kill for 
" the fun of it, and resent any humanitarian criticism 
" on the one-sided warfare, carried on hitherto to the 
" total extinction of buffalo and other animals. They 
" approve of game laws only as a means of prolong- 
" ing the fun. 

"If animal and man stood on an equality, as in the 
" early ages, one could respect the game, but creatures 
" now have no more show than have the miserable 
" doomed bulls in the bull-rings of Spain and Mexico, 
" and the chase is mere wanton slaughter, and is 
" brutalizing. 

"An animal, not needed for food, has as much 
" right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness 
" as a man has, and it is a sin to kill it, for sport, — 



Iniquity in High Places 19 

' to hook a fish to throw it back, or let it gasp its life 
' out on land, and be wasted ; to kill birds for the 
' plumage to trick out vanity ; to kill deer in wan- 
' tonness — no one needs buckskin, and venison is of 
' no account. 

"It is cruel; it is useless slaughter; there's nothing 
' brave about it. And it so sets the hair on many 
' people that they read- with all due resignation of 
' accidents to hunters. No less than twelve men, 
' taken for deer in Maine woods, have been shot and 
' five of them killed lately, and one is rather glad of 
' it. They only got what they would give. The 
' poetic justice of their fate would have been perfect 
' if the deer had killed them instead of their erring 
' fellows in the carnival of slaughter. What business 
' had they hunting deer, whose flesh and skin they 
'did not need? And there have been like fatalities 
' in the Adirondacks. 

"What right had Roosevelt to slaughter 'lions' in 
'Colorado? They would not vote for him, any- 
' how, or oppose him on the stump, either. He was 
' driven by a surviving brutal instinct that has no 
' right place in civilization. If he wanted to show 
' his prowess, why didn't he leave his gun and dogs, 
' and tackle a lion alone, on equal terms? He weighs 
' about as much as a lion, and has claws and teeth, 
' if the caricaturists may be believed. 

"Suppose a lot of angels 'should come down here, 
' armed with celestial shooting irons as much superior 
' to ours as ours are to Indian tomahawks and Zulu 



20 Iniquity in High Places 

" spears, and should go gunning' for us, how'd we like 
"that? It would not be a bit funnier than a hunted 
" bear turning to hunt a hunter. The average hunter 
" sees no humor in that. Oh, but he makes time, and 
" calls on all the gods, and hits the road, and thor- 
" oughly disapproves of hunting as a sport, when the 
" bear is hunting him. The argument is unanswera- 
" ble when the bear gets a move on him and racks, 
" trots, paces and gallops toward the hunter. And 
" the man of peace, observing the race, is like a hen- 
" pecked husband who shouted, 'Go it, Betsy ! go it, 
" bear.' He didn't care a cent which got it in the 
" neck." 

There is a faint shade of semi-irreverence in the 
foregoing article which might create the impression 
that the writer is an anarchist. Such an impression 
would be entirely erroneous. The writer believes that 
the killing of bear and deer is an act of wickedness, 
but the killing of a Filipino is an act of holiness unto 
God. Such a noble and pious sentiment on his part 
marks him, of course, as a devoted patriot and devout 
Christian of the latest and most approved American 
stamp. 

But the writer sets forth a truth that is most per- 
tinent to our present discussion. He says that the 
long and desperate and doubtful warfare between 
the human animal and the different species of the 
brute creation — a warfara that did not turn in man's 
favor till he had developed sufficient intelligence to 
manufacture deadly weapons — that this warfare re- 



Iniquity in High Places 21 

suited in implanting in the human breast a passion 
for killing animals, a love for killing animals, and 
that this passion became an integral part of human 
nature and has been handed down for millions of 
years as a hereditary instinct and is now a leading 
characteristic of the human race. He is correct. We 
love to kill animals. We hook the trout and the pike 
and the perch. We shoot the lark and the robin and 
the dove. We kill the deer and the antelope. We 
clamber up the heights of the Alps to kill the chamois, 
and we skirt the shores of the Arctic to kill the walrus 
and the musk ox. We go to the Rocky Mountains to 
kill the bear and the elk, and we go to South Africa 
to kill the giraffe and the springbok and the hartebeest. 
Wealthy sportsmen traverse and re-traverse the face 
of the earth at great expense, simply for the pleasure 
of killing wild animals. The editor of the Press de- 
nounces this slaughter as prompted by a Drutal instinct 
that has no rightful place in civilization. 

But if the human animal by waging incessant and 
deadly warfare for countless ages upon the different 
species of the brute creation has developed a heredi- 
tary instinct that now prompts man to kill beasts, so 
has the human animal by waging incessant and deadly 
warfare for countless ages upon the members of his 
own species developed a hereditary instinct that now 
prompts man to kill man — of the other tribe or race 
or nation. The two instincts, the two impulses, the 
two passions, clearly reveal themselves in human na- 
ture. But the passion for killing men is vastly deeper 



22 Iniquity in High Places 

and stronger and more intensely exciting and absorb- 
ing tban the passion for killing beasts. In former 
rears a few Englishmen may have visited South 
Africa for the purpose of hunting beasts, but when 
South Africa afforded an opportunity for hunting 
men all England turned out a quarter of a million 
hunters, and expended a thousand million dollars in 
bagging the game, and broke out, from time to time, 
in national jubilee of wild, intoxicating joy over the 
successful progress of the work. The American peo- 
ple would have no special ambition, no earnest desire 
to expend money in killing wild beasts in the Philip- 
pine Islands, but the American people most promptly 
and most enthusiastically pay out fifty million dollars 
per annum for the pleasure of killing men in the 
Philippine Islands. The one hundred thousand 
notches in the butt of the American musket which 
indicate the number of the Filipino victims that have 
been slain are a source of pride and joy to the Amer- 
ican Christian. Beasthood roots deeper than piety 
in the human heart. The teachings of Christ which 
have been productive of the greatest blessings ever 
vouchsafed to mankind are thrown to the winds 
whenever and wherever an excuse or pretext can be 
framed for engaging in the slaughter of our fellow- 
men. When war comes, by spontaneity or by mach- 
inations of wicked rulers, the human race speedily 
sheds its superficial veneering of civilization and 
stands out in all its naked barbarism and savagery 
and beastliness. 



Iniquity in High Places 23 

A tiger cub a few days old was caught in the 
jungles of India and taken by its captor to his home. 
It was fed on milk, and it throve. It was as playful 
as a kitten. It grew up to its full size and was the 
pet of the household, roaming from room to room 
at its will. But one day a large piece of raw, bloody 
meat came in the tiger's way. With a roar that 
shook the building to its foundation the tiger sprang 
upon the meat, and seizing it in his jaws rushed out 
of the house and disappeared in the jungle. It is 
the nature of the beast. English and French soldiers 
have not exchanged shots on any battlefield since the 
days of Waterloo, nearly a hundred years ago. No 
living man knows anything of any war between Eng- 
land and France except as he gathers the facts from 
the page of history. During this long interval of 
peace there has been practically no difficulty and no 
occasion for animosity between the two countries. 
But if to-morrow all France knew to an absolute cer- 
tainty that one month of war would result in the 
waving of the French flag in triumph over the ashes 
of London, in the waving of the French flag in tri- 
umph over the ashes of Liverpool, in the waving of 
the French flag over the ashes of Manchester and 
Birmingham, the whole French people, every man, 
woman and child, would spring to their feet and with 
a tiger roar that would shake the continent and shake 
the world, would rush to the slaughter. It is the 
nature of the beast. When William Mclvinley finally 
concluded that his grasp on political power would be 



24 Iniquity in High Places 

strengthened and perpetuated by plunging the country 
into a most iniquitous and most unnecessary war, he 
knew that the love of blood that pervades the entire 
human race and reigns supreme in the human heart 
would back him up and sustain him in any crime of 
that character he might propose to commit. He knew 
that if he let the American tiger loose that tiger 
would spring with fiendish joy at the throat of poor 
old, dying Spain, already lying prostrate and help- 
less on the ground, and already gasping for her last 
breath. It is the nature of the beast. 

Let no one dream for a moment that these brutal 
instincts are susceptible of early eradication. All 
animal instincts are necessarily of the slowest growth. 
They must have required a period of time somewhat 
short of eternity for their development, and they would 
seem to have the quality of absolute permanence so 
long as the conditions that called them into existence 
remain. How long, think you, did it take the bee 
to develop the faculty and the instinct that prompts it 
to pump the honey from the flower into a reservoir in 
its own body, and then to disgorge that honey into 
the hexagonal waxen cells which it had previously 
manufactured for the storage of the fruits of its indus- 
try? How long would it take the bee to unlearn that 
instinct? How long did it take the spider to develop 
the faculty and the instinct that prompts it to throw 
its guy ropes, composed of exudations from its own 
body, from bush to bush and from twig to twig, and 
then to interweave and interlace these guy ropes with 



Iniquity in High Places 25 

filaments of fine webbing till a perfect snare was com- 
pleted for the entanglement of its victims? How long 
would it take the spider to outgrow and forget this 
faculty and instinct? How long did it take the tiger 
to develop its fangs and claws, and the ferocious dis- 
position which is the inevitable and inseparable ac- 
companiment of fangs and claws? How long a time 
would be required to change the tiger's nature? If 
a number of tigers were securely confined in a given 
tract of country, and they and their descendants were 
fed on nothing but bread and milk for ten thousand 
generations they would not thereby be converted into 
lambs. If all war between human beings on earth 
were abolished forever, if all armies were disbanded 
and all navies and all implements of death were de- 
stroyed, there would still remain in the human heart 
that damnable lust for human blood. A million years 
of profound peace would not suffice to bleach that 
hellishness out of human nature. 

But nevertheless we have evidence that animal in- 
stincts do undergo changes. In fact it would seem 
to be the law of evolution that a change of conditions 
continued for a period of time indefinitely vast will 
modify and remold the animal nature. The chicken 
at the doorstep must in the remotest ages have had 
a wild fowl for its progenitor which like all other 
wild fowls was capable of self-support ; but the chicken 
has been domesticated for so long a time, and for so 
long a time has been dependent on man for protec- 
tion and sustenance that if deprived of that protec- 



26 Iniquity in High Places 

tion and sustenance and turned adrift in forest or 
prairie it would speedily be destroyed or perish from 
starvation. The kitten at the fireside must have de- 
scended from a wild animal ; but its ancestral fierce- 
ness of disposition has materially toned down, and it 
often exhibits positive affection for the members of 
the human household in which its instincts now lead 
it to make its home. But it is in man himself that 
the most remarkable development and changes have 
occurred. Time was when the human animal had no 
more mental acumen than an angleworm. Time was 
when the human animal had no more moral sense 
than a wild boar. Time was when the human animal 
had no more tender mercies or sweet sympathies than 
a shark. The mental and moral characteristics of 
the human race of to-day are an aftergrowth super- 
induced upon the original animal basis of the human 
being. In the presence of this aftergrowth the brutal 
instincts of the primeval human beast are not only 
partially overshadowed and concealed but they are 
also partially dwarfed and shriveled and weakened. 
From this circumstance we may take courage. We 
may confidently cherish the hope that in obedience to 
the law of progress the human race will yet rise to 
higher planes of action and to nobler, loftier and purer 
lines of sentiment. We are justified in entertaining 
optimistic views of the future and in believing that 
with the lapse of cycles upon cycles of time the hu- 
man race will effect a still further escape from the 
taint of its original beasthood and will then regard 



Iniquity in High Places 27 

the wanton murder of the people of a neighboring na- 
tion as a crime as heinous as the wanton murder of 
the people of a neighboring house. 

But we are discussing man as he is, and not man as 
he ought to be or will be. And we find that man has 
a dual nature, a double nature, a two-sided nature. 
One side of man is the domestic side, the social side, 
the civic side. The other side of man is the inter- 
national, interracial, the intertribal side. On the 
one side of man are clustered all the virtues, all the 
graces, all the attainments, all the aspirations and 
attributes of what is called true manhood. On the 
other side, man is a bloodthirsty beast by direct and 
unbroken inheritance from the ferocious wild human 
beast, the primeval human gorilla of millions and mil- 
lions of years ago. Of course, this two-sided nature 
dates back no farther than the period when man began 
to develop intelligence. Previous to that time the 
human animal was wholly and totally a wild beast — 
a wild beast through and through, a wild beast from 
core to cuticle. 

But when the human animal began to recognize 
the ties of kindred the foundation was laid for the 
ultimate development of more or less of sympathy, 
of friendship, of harmony, of confidence and co- 
operation. In the spirit of mutual confidence leading 
to joint and co-operative effort lay the germ of future 
human progress and future human civilization. 
Whenever and wherever two or more primitive sav- 
ages dug their holes or builded their rude huts side 



28 Iniquity in High Places 

by side it was with the tacit understanding, the im- 
plied agreement, that they were to respect each 
others' rights, to respect each others' lives and prop- 
erty. From such rude beginnings came all later civ- 
ilization. The surface of the earth teems with evi- 
dence of the achievements of human hands when 
human animals had become sufficiently developed to 
work in community and co-operation. The Pyra- 
mids are an everlasting memorial of the industry, the 
toil, of myriads of men. Sweep away the drifting 
sands of Nubia or Mesopotamia and huge, prostrate 
pillars of marble or granite which once supported the 
roofs of magnificent temples will come to .light. 
Strip off the rank tropic vegetation of Guatemala or 
Yucatan and you will find the outlines of great cities 
which were once the homes of busy and presumably 
thrifty populations. The impulse toward civilization 
manifested itself in ancient times in different and en- 
tirely isolated quarters of the globe. Its results are 
to be found not merely on the banks of the Nile and 
the shores of the Mediterranean, but they are to be 
found in India, in the domains of the Montezumas in 
Mexico, in the lands over which the Incas of Peru 
held mild and beneficent sway, in the distant and un- 
known regions of China and Japan. These develop- 
ments seem to have been of entirely spontaneous and 
indigenous growth in the various countries in which 
they are found, thus showing that the tendency to- 
ward progress is universally inherent in the human 
race. 



Iniquity in High Places 29 

But the impetus given to the new arts of peace by 
the newly developed power of combination was rivaled 
if not eclipsed by the impetus given by the same 
power of combination to the practise of wholesale 
murder which is called war. If men could combine 
to work they could combine to fight. If the con- 
structive energies of the race were called into exist- 
ence and into activity under the new era of intelli- 
gence the destructive energies which had always had 
an existence during all the countless ages reaching 
back to the days of incipient, inchoate human beast- 
hood were now quickened and vivified and endowed 
with greater strength for the accomplishment of their 
deadly work on wider and broader scale. If resources 
could be procured to maintain an army of workmen 
in building cities and temples and towers then re- 
sources could be procured to maintain an army of 
murderers in destroying- cities and temples and tow- 
ers with all the inhabitants thereof. Civilization 
would really seem to have been a stimulus, an adju- 
vant to the horrid practise, the eternal practise of 
wholesale human slaughter. 

Whenever a handful of savages gathered in a given 
locality and made homes for themselves they im- 
mediately became a target for attack. If they ac- 
cumulated anything in the shape of worldly posses- 
sions they were still more liable to be struck down 
and destroyed by greedy, covetous, rapacious foes. 
The first and foremost and uppermost thought in 
the mind of all savages therefore, if not for aggres- 



30 Iniquity in High Places 

sion, was for escape from aggression or defense 
against aggression. Perhaps they climbed trees and 
built their nests as certain wild tribes in the tropical 
regions of the earth are said to do at the present 
day. Perhaps like the lake-dwellers of Switzerland 
they went out in the edge of the water and built 
huts upon piles. Perhaps like the cliff-dwellers of the 
Sierras they carved chambers out of the solid rock in 
the face of overhanging precipices as a last refuge 
from resistless and relentless enemies. Perhaps, and 
more commonly, they resorted to some rude system 
of fortification as a means of protection to their 
dwellings. And as the human animal advanced in 
intelligence, and his settlements became more popu- 
lous and wealthy these rude fortifications became more 
elaborate and extensive till they took on the shape of 
lofty and solid walls. The building of these walls 
everywhere throughout the domains of ancient civil- 
ization are token and evidence of the existence of a 
spirit of eternal hostility between the different races 
and tribes of men. The Great Wall of China, 1500 
miles in length, the most stupendous work of defense 
ever made by human hands, was erected for the pur- 
pose of preventing the irruptions of the fierce Tartars. 
The wall from sea to sea across the island of Great 
Britain was constructed by the Roman Emperor Se- 
verus with the intent to check the predatory incur- 
sions of the painted savages from the mountains in 
the north of Scotland. The wall of Babylon the 
Great, said to have been more than 50 miles in length 



Iniquity in High Places 31 

and more than 300 feet in height, and wide enough 
on the top for a roadway on which four chariots could 
drive abreast, was built in order to beat back the 
waves of war which from the north or the south, from 
the east or the west, were incessantly rolling over 
the area of Asia Minor. The Narragansett Indians 
surrounded their cluster of wigwams with a row 
of palisades as a means of security against the attacks 
of their dreaded aboriginal foes, or the attacks of the 
still more dreaded Puritanical saints. The ancient 
walled city was typical as well as evidential of man's 
two-sided nature. The city itself had a two-sided life. 
Within its walls there were homes. There were do- 
mestic ties. There were friendships. There were 
efforts for the cultivation of man's mental and moral 
nature. There were rules and regulations for the 
government of men's conduct in their dealings with 
each other. There were diversified arts and indus- 
tries. There were the comforts, the luxuries, the 
amenities, the refinements of life. But the lofty bat- 
tlements surrounding the city frowned defiance and 
challenged attack from merciless, murderous foe. 
The words of the poet are somewhat descriptive of 
the situation of the ancient city : 

"Without, the world was wild with rage; 
Unkenneled demons were abroad; 
But with the mother and the child 
Within, there was the peace of God." 

But it speaks volumes for the resistless force of 
the element of progress in human nature that though 



32 Iniquity in High Places 

civilization was compelled to seek shelter behind walls 
from which it was often routed and destroyed, though 
every portion of the surface of the habitable earth 
was time and again, and time without end, swept and 
seamed and scathed and scarred by the storm of 
war, though fertile and populous districts were time 
and again converted into howling wastes, neverthe- 
less the net results of human experience show that 
man is steadily rising to loftier and loftier mental and 
moral heights. Despite the ravages of Goths and 
Vandals, of Turks and Tartars, of Arabs and Sara- 
cens, despite the horrid, murderous deeds of your 
Alarics and Attilas, your Jenghes Khans and Tamer- 
lanes, your Bonapartes and McKinleys, the world is 
moving forward to an era of universal peace that 
shall be broken nevermore. 

A most remarkable instance of the two-sidedness of 
human nature is furnished us in the case of the 
Biblical character, Moses, the great Hebrew lawgiver. 
In the Book of Exodus, Chapter 20, and also in 
Chapter 31 and Chapter 32, we find the statement 
that the Ten Commandments written upon tables of 
stone by the finger of God were brought down from 
Mount Sinai by Moses and delivered to the children 
of Israel. Independently of their origin the Ten 
Commandments are universally considered to be of 
great moral worth and moral weight, second only in 
importance to the rules of action prescribed in the 
Sermon on the Mount. Those of the commandments 



Iniquity in High Places 33 

which bear on man's social duties run about in this 
wise : 

Honor thy father and thy mother. 
Thou shalt not kill. 
Thou shalt not steal. 
Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. 
Thou shalt not covet the things that belong to thy 
neighbor. 

These commandments are the affirmation or re- 
affirmation of principles that must have been recog- 
nized and acted upon ages and ages before the time 
of Moses — principles without which there can be no 
civilization and no organized or orderly form of so- 
ciety. 

But we find Moses acting a very different part, and 
appearing in a very different light. The Book of 
Numbers, Chapter 31, tells the story. We give it 
very nearly verbatim, a few offensive expressions 
being changed into a more acceptable form : 

1. 
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 

2. 

Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites; after- 
ward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people. 

3. 
And Moses spake unto the people, saying. Arm some 
of 3 r ourselves unto the war, and let them go against the 
Midianites, and avenge the Lord of Midian. 

4. 

Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of 
Israel, shall ye send to the war. 



34 Iniquity in High Places 

5. 
So there were delivered out of the thousands of Israel, 
a thousand of every tribe, twelve thousand armed for war. 

6. 
And Moses sent them to the war, a thousand of every 
tribe, them and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, 
to the war, with the holy instruments, and the trumpets 
to blow in his hand. 

7. 
And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord 
commanded Moses; and they slew all the males. 

8. 
And they slew the kings of Midian, besides the rest of 
them that were slain; namely Evi and Rekem, and Zur, 
and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also 
the son of Beor they slew with the sword. 

9. 

And the children of Israel took all the women of 
Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil 
of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. 

10. 
And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and 
all their goodly castles, with fire. 

11. 
And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of 
men and of beasts. 

12. 
And they brought the captives and the prey and the 
spoil unto Moses and Eleazar the priest, and unto the 
congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at 
the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho. 

13. 

And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes 
of the congregation, went forth to meet them without 
the camp. 



Iniquity in High Places 35 

14. 
And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, 
with the captains over thousands, and captains over hun- 
dreds, which came from the battle. 

15. 
And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the 
women alive? 

16. 
Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through 
the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the 
Lord in the matter of Peor. and there was a plague 
among the congregation of the Lord. 

17. 
Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, 
and kill every married woman and mother. 

IS. 

But all the women-children keep alive for yourselves. 
******** 

25. 
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 

26. 
Take the sum of the prey that was taken, both of man 
and of beast, thou and Eleazar the priest, and the chief 
fathers of the congregation: 

27. 
And divide the prey into two parts; between them that 
took the war upon them, who went out to battle, and be- 
tween all the congregation: 

28. 
And levy a tribute unto the Lord of the men of war 
which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both 
of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and 
of the sheep: 

29. 
Take it of their half, and give it unto Eleazar the priest, 
for an heave-offering of the Lord. 



36 Iniquity in High Places 

30. 
And of the children of Israel's half, thou shalt take 
one portion of fifty, of the persons, of the beeves, of the 
asses, and of the flocks, of all manner of beasts, and 
give them unto the Levites, which keep the charge of 
the tabernacle of the Lord. 

31. 

And Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the Lord 
commanded Moses. 

32. 

And the booty, being the rest of the prey which the 
men of war had caught, was six hundred thousand and 
seventy thousand and five thousand sheep, 

33. 

And threescore and twelve thousand beeves, 

34. 
And threescore and one thousand asses, 

35. 
And thirty and two thousand persons in all, of female 
children. 

36. 
And the half which was the portion of them that went 
out to war, was in number three hundred thousand and 
seven and thirty thousand and five hundred sheep. 

37. 
And the Lord's tribute of the sheep was six hundred 
and threescore and fifteen. 

38. 
And the beeves were thirty and six thousand; of which 
the Lord's tribute was threescore and twelve. 

39. 

And the asses were thirty thousand and five hundred; 
of which the Lord's tribute was threescore and one. 



Iniquity in High Places 37 

40. 
And the persons were sixteen thousand, of which the 
Lord's tribute was thirty and two persons. 

41. 

And Moses gave the tribute, which was the Lord's 
heave-offering, unto Eleazar the priest, as the Lord com- 
manded Moses. 

42. 

And of the children of Israel's half which Moses di- 
vided from the men that warred. 

******** 

47. 
Even of the children of Israel's half, Moses took one 
portion of fifty, both of man and beast, and gave them 
unto the Levites, which kept the charge of the tabernacle 
of the Lord; as the Lord commanded Moses. 

What a shocking spectacle do we here witness ! 
Imagine for a moment that the spoils taken from the 
Midianitish victims are paraded before our eyes. 
First come six hundred thousand sheep. Next come 
seventy thousand cattle. Then follow sixty thou- 
sand asses. Lastly comes a drove of thirty-two 
thousand little orphan girls whose fathers and moth- 
ers and brothers, even their baby brothers, had all 
been killed. Perhaps some of these girls are carry- 
ing their baby sisters in their arms. What horrible 
sufferings and hardships and privations and brutality 
must these little orphan girls have experienced ! 
What an act of mercy it would have been to have 
killed those little girls at the same time their brothers 
were killed rather than to have reserved them for this 
horrible fate, and probably for a still more horrible 
fate in the future ! 



38 Iniquity in High Places 

But from the wording of the thirty-first chapter 
of the Book of Numbers it would appear that the 
Lord was the author of the massacre of the Midian- 
itish women and children. That chapter contains the 
statement that the Lord directed Moses to attack 
the Midianites. The chapter also contains the state- 
ment that after the massacre was accomplished the 
Lord directed a division of the spoils, and also di- 
rected that a share of the spoils including a share of 
the little orphan girls should be set apart for an 
offering to the Lord. True, it does not appear that 
the Lord directed Moses to murder the women and 
children. But as the Lord was of course cognizant 
of all that was transpiring, as he was apparently on 
familiar speaking terms with Moses, and must have 
been within easy speaking distance, he could have 
instantly countermanded Moses' order to put the 
women and children to death. As this was not done 
it is certainly very plain that the text of the Scripture 
makes the Lord responsible for the commission of the 
great crime. But the idea is too horrible for con- 
templation. No civilized human being will for an 
instant harbor the thought that the Lord was respon- 
sible for the murder of the women and children. 
The Lord was no more concerned in the massacre 
of the Midianitish women and children than he was 
concerned in the massacre of the English women and 
children in India in the Sepoy mutiny of 1857. The 
Lord was no more concerned in the massacre of the 
Midianitish women and children than he was con- 



Iniquity in High Places 39 

cerned in the massacre of the missionary women and 
children by the Chinese Boxers in the year 1900. 
The simple facts of the case are that the pretense of 
Moses that he was acting under divine command in 
the Midianitish affair was a pure falsehood, a pure 
fabrication, designed by him for the purpose of ex- 
alting himself in the eyes of the ignorant and credu- 
lous Hebrews. The crime was the act of Moses, 
and of Moses only. This substantiates our claim that 
in the case of Moses was to be found a remarkable 
instance of the two-sidedness of human nature. On 
his domestic side, his social side, his civic side, he 
was the promulgator of the Ten Commandments, the 
great moral lawgiver, the one who above and beyond 
all other lawgivers of the world is of the greatest 
celebrity and highest repute. On his intertribal side, 
his interracial side, his international side, he was a 
murderous savage whose deeds of atrocity would 
shame an Apache Indian and bring a blush on the 
black cheek of the negro king of Dahomey. On his 
intertribal side, his interracial side, his international 
side, Moses like all the rest of the human species was 
a bloodthirsty, murderous beast. If he could have 
reappeared in the flesh in these latter days he might 
have been of material service to the government of 
the United States in the sacred work of avenging the 
Lord on the Filipinos. The American general who 
ordered the killing of all Filipino boys over ten years 
of age might have taken lessons from Moses, who 
murdered all the Midianitish boys even though they 



40 Iniquity in High Places 

may have been infants that had riot breathed the air of 
heaven for the space of ten minutes. 

Incidentally it may be noted that the concluding 
paragraphs of the thirty-first chapter of the Book of 
Numbers show that the Israelitish warriors plun- 
dered the corpses of their Midianitish victims of val- 
uable jewelry, a portion of which, at least, they vol- 
untarily offered to the Lord. The officers of the host 
came to Moses and said : 

"We have therefore brought an oblation for the 
" Lord, what every man hath gotten, of jewels of 
t: gold, chains and bracelets, rings, earrings, and tab- 
" lets, to make an atonement for our souls before the 
" Lord." 

Moses took the gold, which amounted to sixteen 
thousand seven hundred and fifty shekels, worth 
eighty thousand dollars. 

This affair finds something approximating to a par- 
allel in recent American experience. In March, 1901, 
a transport laden with American soldiers whose term 
of service had expired, arrived in San Francisco 
from Manila. Of course, these men were brave, 
noble and devoted patriots. Of course they faced 
death on the battlefield in order to vindicate the na- 
tional honor. Of course they bared their intrepid 
bosoms to a storm of hostile bullets in order to add 
new glories to the flag. Of course they left their 
homes and their firesides and their business, and 
traversed half the circuit of the earth for the high 
and holy purpose of carrying the light of the Gospel 



Iniquity in High Places 41 

to the distant Filipinos in order that these poor people 
might he redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled 
from their bondage to ignorance, Satan and Sin. Of 
course. But these men do not seem to have been en- 
tirely free from what we may euphemistically term 
human weakness. The San Francisco Chronicle in 
its issue of March 14, 1901, has a laudatory article 
in regard to these troops, from which some excerpts 
are here given : 

"The Thirtieth Volunteer Infantry, numbering 764 
" officers and men, mostly from Illinois and Michi- 
" gan, is encamped on the Presidio hillside. In ten 
" days the returned soldiers will be discharged from 
" military service. Each of them will get from $250 
"to $1500, and the officers will receive considerably 
" more. In addition to the Government pay it is ad- 
" mitted that the men have among them an aggregate 
" of about $40,000 worth of diamonds and jewelry, 
" acquired in the service of capturing big towns hastily 
" abandoned by frightened natives. 

"The Thirtieth has in camp two noncommissioned 
" officers who are practically the heroes of the regi- 
" ment. George J. Harmon, of Chicago, was award- 
" ed the Congressional medal of honor for his daring 
" and gallantry at the midnight capture of Malosa Hill. 
" Another hero is a sergeant-major, a young news- 
" paper man of Detroit. He has been officially re- 
" ported by Captain Newberry as 'the best soldier I 
" 'ever knew and the highest type of noncommissioned 
" 'officer in the United States Army,' has been praised 



42 Iniquity in High Places 

" for military skill and clerical ability in handling 
" regimental records, and has been urgently recom- 
" mended for the medal of honor for his 'supreme 
" courage and gallant conduct' in crossing a raging 
" mountain torrent in a gorge at the fight of Dingin, 
" where, to avoid what seemed a second Custer mas- 
" sacre from ambush, he dashed down a bank in ad- 
" vance of nineteen companions, faced a galling fire 
" from above on three sides, breasted the swift, muddy 
" stream, floundered across sixty yards, part of the 
" way groping under water, rushed up the opposite 
" declivity, and, by the very impetuosity and reck- 
" lessness of the charge of his men, put to flight a 
" force of 400 insurgents, of whom twenty-nine were 
" killed during the engagement, which began with a 
" sudden fusillade from the Filipinos and the discharge 
" of a big bamboo cannon, firing horseshoes, and kill- 
" ing six Americans at the first shot. 

"The sergeant-major sent $2,000 worth of captured 
" diamonds home to his mother." 

From this article it would appear that the American 
Christian soldiers are fully equal to the ancient Israel- 
itish warriors in their swinish appetite for plunder ; 
but in comparison with their Hebrew prototypes 
they would nevertheless seem to be somewhat short 
on piety. We do not hear of the Americans offering 
any diamonds to the Lord as an atonement for the 
sins of their souls. We may, however, indulge the 
fond hope that this failure to perform an obvious re- 
ligious duty will not in any appreciable degree dimin- 



Iniquity in High Places 43 

ish the intensity of the fervor with which the people 
of the Philippine Islands return thanks to God for 
the coming of the Americans to their shores. 

A most striking" illustration of the heastliness of 
the human race is furnished us in the reception given 
by the City of New York to Admiral Dewey in Sep- 
tember, 1899. But before describing this affair let 
us go back a thousand years to the time when the island 
of Manhattan, on which Xew York City is now situ- 
ated, was the home of an Indian tribe. These Indians, 
like all other Indians and like all other human beings 
who are not Indians, had been for time immemorial 
and for time incalculable involved in ceaseless strife 
and bloodshed. A band of young men belonging to 
this tribe engage in a marauding expedition against 
their hereditary enemies. They meet with success- 
and set out upon their return to their homes. As 
they approach their village they send scouts in ad- 
vance to announce their coming. Of course there are 
no monster cannon to shake the earth with salutes of 
welcome. Of course there are no magnificent tem- 
ples in which to offer sacrifices to heathen deities. 
Of course there are no stately Christian churches in 
which to sound Te Deums of praise to the God of 
Battles for his loving kindness in vouchsafing a "glor- 
ious victon'." 

But the heart of the Indian is sound on the war 
question. The heart of the Indian is perennially over- 
flowing with the spirit of wolfish bloodthirstiness 
which we euphemistically term "patriotism" and upon 



44 Iniquity in High Places 

which we bestow unstinted praise as the noblest trait 
in the human character. The warriors, with faces 
and bodies hideously painted in various colors, and 
uttering unearthly yells in imitation of the cries of 
wild beasts approach their village. The old men, wom- 
en and children gather to meet them, and in shrill 
voice echo the yells of the victors. The warriors 
carry poles upon their shoulders from which dangle 
the scalps of their victims. They brandish their war- 
clubs and boast of their exploits. The scalp poles 
are handed to the women to be held aloft while the 
warriors circle around them in a war dance. They 
utter fiendish yells. They strike blows at imaginary 
enemies. They imitate their own actions in the battle, 
and they mimic the dying groans of the enemies they 
have plain. They distort their countenances, gnash 
their teeth, and work themselves up to a pitch of 
frenzied madness. They conclude their festivities 
by burning their prisoners to death at the stake. 

Go back two thousand years to the period when 
ancient Rome was engaged in subjugating the nations 
and peoples of the earth. A general who has achieved 
an important conquest in Europe or Asia or Africa, 
and has returned to Rome with his army, is accorded 
an official reception, an official triumph. The great 
city, the mistress of the world, is wholly given over 
to manifestations of joy. All work is suspended. The 
temples are thrown open and decorated with flowers. 
The streets are gay with garlands and thronged with 
multitudes of people who welcome the victors with 



Iniquity in High Places 45 

loud and continuous acclamations of praise. The great 
procession is headed by the august Roman Senate and 
the magistrates. They are followed by trumpeters and 
then by the spoils of the war, consisting of arms, stand- 
ards, statues, valuable treasures, representations of 
battles, representations of the towns, rivers and moun- 
tains of the conquered country, models of fortresses, 
etc. Next come the victims destined for sacrifice, 
especially white oxen with gilded horns. Then fol- 
low the prisoners of war who have not been sold as 
slaves, but kept to grace the triumph ; they are to be 
put to death when the procession reaches the Capitol, 
the great temple of the god Jupiter. The chariot 
which carries the victorious general is crowned with 
laurel and drawn by four white horses. The gen- 
eral, standing in the chariot, is attired in the purple 
robes of Jupiter, embroidered with gold. In his right 
hand he holds a laurel branch ; in his left hand an 
ivory scepter with an eagle at the point. Above his 
head the golden crown of Jupiter is held aloft by a 
slave, who reminds him in the midst of his glory that 
he is a mortal man. Lastly come the soldiers, shout- 
ing Io Triumphe, and singing songs. On reaching 
the temple of Jupiter the general places the laurel 
branch on the lap of the image of the god and offers a 
bull in sacrifice. A feast of the magistrates and Sen- 
ate, and sometimes of the soldiers and people, con- 
clude the ceremonies, which on some occasions oc- 
cupy several days. 

But let us look at the Dewey reception. For months 



46 Iniquity in High Places 

previous large sums of money had been collected and 
expended in preparation for the great event. When 
Dewey was slowly making half the circuit of the earth 
on his return to America the telegraph each day an- 
nounced the location of his vessel to an expectant and 
impatient public. And when he reached New York 
harbor the whole people, as by one impulse, abandoned 
their business and their work and broke forth in a 
wild jubilee of delight. All the vessels in the har- 
bor were decorated from stem to stern and from deck 
to mast-head with holiday dress of flags, and bunting 
of brilliant hues. Dewey's vessel slowly steamed up 
North River followed by a majestic fleet of iron-clads 
after which came a thousand private steamers. The 
guns of the fleets and the guns of the forts thundered 
forth an exchange of salutes. The wharves and shores 
for miles and miles were thronged and packed by 
dense crowds of people from whom came wave after 
wave of deafening cheers. Nightfall only added zest 
to the carnival. The harbor was blazing with red 
lights burned on every ship. The streets were a sea 
of electric illumination. The heavens were incessantly 
aflame with the explo'sion of fireworks. The second 
clay witnessed the great procession, reaching nearly 
the whole length of Manhattan Island and attended 
by three millions of spectators gathered from far and 
near to honor and applaud the hero of the occasion. 
Thirty thousand soldiers passed under the triumphal 
arch and thousands of school children joined in songs 
of praise. 



Iniquity in High Places 47 

Here we have three celebrations and the most acute 
and searching analysis will fail to discover the slight- 
est difference in their moral composition. Each of 
these celebrations is the irrepressible outburst of fiend- 
ish joy over the wholesale murder of the people of 
another nation, race or tribe. Take your Aboriginal 
Savage, your Roman Heathen, and your American 
Christian, and strip them of the peculiarities of their 
civilization or uncivilization, and you have before you 
three entities in all the naked bloodthirstiness of the 
beast. If there be any antecedent wickedness in the 
deeds leading to and prompting and inspiring these 
various celebrations, then the Christian is immeasur- 
ably the greatest criminal. The Christian sins against 
the greatest light. The savage and the heathen have 
been under no moral influence. They have had no 
moral teaching and no moral training. They have had 
no moral guidance, no moral code, no moral precepts, 
no sense of moral responsibility. But the Christian 
claims that his pathway from the cradle to the grave 
is illumined by radiance from on high. He claims 
that he has received instructions directly from the 
mouth of Almighty God. He claims that he has been 
redeemed by Divine sacrifice, sanctified by Divine 
grace, blessed by Divine love, and guided by Divine 
wisdom. The staff upon which he leans throughout 
his earthly pilgrimage is the blessed assurance that a 
life of righteousness and holiness will be crowned with 
eternal reward. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for 
thev shall see God." In his ears have ever sounded 



48 Iniquity in High Places 

the words, "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, 
" bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate 
" you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, 
" and persecute you." 

But no savage tribe, no cannibal tribe, no pagan 
monarch., or pagan nation was ever guilty of a wicked- 
er or cruder deed than that perpetrated by these Unit- 
ed States in the harbor of Manila, through the agency 
of George Dewey. In time of profound peace, when 
we had not an enemy on earth we sent forth our 
navies and armies and made a wicked, wanton, un- 
provoked and entirely piratical attack upon a peace- 
able and friendly nation. In that affair in Manila 
harbor we killed and mangled three hundred men — 
men who had fathers and mothers, brothers and sis- 
ters, wives and children — men who had never injured 
the United States in any way, shape or manner — men 
belonging to a nation that had never injured the Unit- 
ed States in any way, shape, or manner. Fouler and 
blacker crime was never committed on the face of 
God's earth. More horrible episode was never re- 
corded on the page of history. In point of morality 
this deed was exactly on a par with that of the man 
who should take his Henry rifle and, crossing the 
road, should shoot down his neighbor and his neigh- 
bor's wife and his neighbor's manservant and his 
neighbor's maidservant and all his neighbor's children. 

A few years ago in Santa Clara County, California, 
a man named Dunham shot his wife and his wife's 
father and his wife's mother and the servant girl and 



Iniquity in High Places 49 

two hired men, leaving six people dead upon the 
premises. In 1898 the United States Dunhamized 
Spain. When the news of the great crime at Manila 
reached the United States the American flag should 
have been furled and tied with crape, the public build- 
ings should have been dressed in black, and the whole 
American people, every man, woman and child, should 
have robed themselves in sackcloth and ashes and 
prostrated themselves upon their faces in the dust and 
cried out in agony of remorse "God be merciful to 
us sinners." And for ages to come the anniversary of 
this horrid deed, should be observed as a day of fast- 
ing, humiliation and prayer, as an atonement for the 
great national sin. But the human animal is not that 
kind of a beast. 

But we are told that we entered upon this war from 
the highest and holiest and purest of motives. We 
are told that from the depths of the noble American 
heart there came welling up an irresistible flood of 
sympathy for the suffering Cubans, crushed to earth 
by the exactions and tyranny of Spain. We are told 
that America to-day wears a crown of imperishable 
glory by reason of the fact that she alone of all the 
nations that ever existed on earth poured out the most 
precious blood of her brave sons in a struggle prompt- 
ed wholly and solely by impulses of humanity, philan- 
thropy and love. Yes, we have heard this. We have 
laid this flattering unction to our souls. We have 
hugged this fond delusion to our bosoms. We have 
administered this soothing balm to our smarting con 



50 Iniquity in High Places 

science. We have rolled this miserable, damnable lie 
like a sweet morsel under our tongue. But lie it is, 
nevertheless. The simple facts of the case are that 
Cuba was a land of peace and plenty at the very 
moment when that horde of demagogues at Washing- 
ton inaugurated that most infamous and most iniqui- 
tous of wars. 

The human race worships a wholesale murderer. 
Napoleon Bonaparte for nearly twenty years kept the 
continent of Europe involved in endless turmoil of 
war, waged for the wicked and selfish purpose of 
gratifying his ambition to rule the world. In these 
incessant conflicts he murdered more than a million 
French soldiers, whose bones were left bleaching on 
a hundred battlefields, or a thousand battlefields, all 
the way from Moscow to Madrid. But though every 
family in the land must have been reached and stricken 
by this horrid carnage, though the first-born in every 
household must have been sacrificed as a victim on 
the altar of the Moloch of war, nevertheless the whole 
French people crawled in the dust before Napoleon 
and kissed his feet in the blindest adoration. In 1898, 
at the battle of the Omdurman, on the banks of the 
Nile, General Kitchener killed 15,000 Arab dervishes 
— fanatical wretches inspired by religious frenzy, who 
with the most reckless desperation marched in solid 
phalanx across an open plain into the flaming jaws of 
the death-dealing British machine guns, which mowed 
them down like grass till not a soul of them was left 
alive. When General Kitchener returned to England 



Iniquity in High Places 51 

he was received with open arms and the most tumul- 
tuous applause by the people of London. He was 
presented with a bonus of one hundred and fifty thou- 
sand dollars by vote of Parliament. He was invited 
to dine with the Queen. Wherefore these marks of 
distinction ? The question needs no answer. It was 
because he had killed so many human beings that he 
was enshrined so deeply in the English heart. If he 
had simply dispersed those dervishes with a loss of a 
dozen or fifteen lives he would never have been noticed. 
But, to test the nature of the impulses that prompt- 
ed the Dewey reception, let us imagine for a moment 
that Dewey had saved three hundred human lives in- 
stead of destroying three hundred human lives. We 
will suppose that while navigating the oriental seas he 
encounters a terrible and lasting hurricane. His ship 
labors heavily amid the rolling waves and is hardly 
more than able to breast the storm. But while the 
gale is still raging with fury a vessel is espied at a 
distance flying signals of distress. Approaching near- 
er it is ascertained that the vessel is in a sinking con- 
dition. Though it seems nearly impossible for a boat 
to live in such a sea Dewey determines to attempt a 
rescue. He orders a boat with a picked crew to be 
lowered. The moment the boat strikes the water it is 
overwhelmed by an enormous wave, which crushes it 
like an egg-shell against the side of the ship, washing 
away the crew, every man of whom perishes. Noth- 
ing daunted, Dewey orders another boat to be pre- 
pared for lowering. He calls for volunteers to man 



52 Iniquity in High Places 

the boat. There's a moment's hesitation. It's a dread 
venture that threatens certain destruction. Dewey him- 
self jumps into the boat and calls for assistance. In 
an instant there is a tumultuous rush to get into the- 
boat. The boat is lowered and Dewey makes his 
way toward the other vessel and commences picking 
up the people that are dropped into the sea within 
his reach. He conveys these to his own ship and then 
makes a second trip of rescue. Other boats are 
launched from the two ships, some of which with their 
occupants are engulfed in the waves, thus adding to 
the loss of life. But Dewey perseveres in the work 
till he has brought away the last human being from the 
sinking ship, which shortly after goes down. He 
finds that he has saved three hundred human lives. 
It was a work of genuine heroism. It was a work that 
required consummate skill and unflinching courage and 
unremitting toil. It was a work attended with the 
most appalling danger ; while the work which he 
performed in Manila harbor was attended with no 
danger at all. In Manila harbor Dewey and his ships 
and his men were beyond the range of Spanish guns, 
and as far as they were concerned the whole affair 
was nothing but so much target practice. 

But what would Dewey have gained personally by 
rescuing this great number of people from the jaws 
of death? Nothing. Practically nothing. Some hu- 
mane society might have given him a vote of thanks 
and a gold medal. Congress might have done the 
same. But the great world would have simply be- 



Iniquity in High Places 53 

stowed an idle glance at the affair, and would have 
forgotten it entirely the next moment. We will sup- 
pose that a year after this event Dewey starts for 
home. He arrives in Xew York harbor with his ship. 
He drops anchor. He goes ashore in his boat. He 
lands at the Battery. He gets on board a street-car 
and rides up town to his hotel utterly unnoticed and 
unknown. And when the papers the next morning 
announce that Dewey has arrived, ninety-nine men 
out of every hundred would ask, ''Who's Dewey?" 
And the hundredth man would answer that he didn't 
know. As the savior of three hundred human lives 
Dewey's name would have passed into oblivion. As 
the destroyer of three hundred human lives Dewey's 
name is entered on the roll of the world's immortal 
heroes. It is because he was the agent for the com- 
mission of a most horrible wholesale slaughter that he 
is deified by the American people. It is because hib 
garments were dripping with human blood that he 
becomes an American god. And the reason for the 
existence of this universal tendency in human nature 
to worship a wholesale murderer is found in the fact 
that today in the veins of every member of the hu- 
man species there flows the blood of the beast — the 
ancestral beast, the untamed and untamable ferocious 
wild human beast of millions and millions of years ago. 
The sweet voice of the angelic fair one welcoming the 
''returning braves" from a career of blood in a for- 
eign land is but the echo of the fierce shriek of her 
ancestress — the she-srorilla. 



54 Iniquity in High Places 

But it is hardly necessary to argue further in sup- 
port of the proposition that man is a bloodthirsty beast. 
He is shown to be such theoretically as the inevitable 
result of the process of evolution through which he 
passed from the condition of a simple germ to his 
present stage of development. He is shown to be such 
practically by the overwhelming testimony of every 
page and every line of human history. When man 
was a beast among beasts he was beset by enemies on 
every side. He was constantly engaged in fighting in 
order to escape destruction by other beasts stronger 
if not fiercer than himself. He was constantly en- 
gaged in fighting in order to overpower and destroy 
weaker animals that he might obtain their flesh for 
food. The spirit of insatiate greed which is the eternal 
groundwork of all animal existence undoubtedly 
prompted him to attack and rob and murder and even 
devour the members of his own species. Molded and 
developed amid such surroundings the human animal 
could not have failed to acquire all the attributes and 
essentials of ferocious beasthood. And when the 
dawning of intelligence enabled him to manufacture 
deadly weapons and enabled him to form combinations 
with his immediate kindred he speedily obtained mas- 
tery over the brute creation, and thenceforth all his 
ferocity and all his unquenchable lust for blood and 
all his brutal instincts were centered and absorbed in 
warfare against the rival tribes and races of his fel- 
low men. Here was the origin of that cloud of war 
which hano-s over the world to this day. War is a 



Iniquity in High Places 55 

relic of beasthood. War is organized and systema- 
tized beastliness. War is wholesale murder legalized 
under every form of government and sanctified under 
every form of religion. "War is hell." The war 
spirit with which the soul of every human being on 
earth is saturated and surcharged is the badge, the 
unmistakable token, the infallible birthmark which 
proves that mankind sprang from the loins of the beast. 
In all human experience, in all human sentiment and 
human impulse, in all human action and human aspira- 
tion the war spirit is an everpresent factor and motor. 
It reveals itself in all our civilization, in all our litera- 
ture, in all our religion. It resounds in our oratory ; 
it breathes in our songs ; it echoes in our prayers. Who 
of us in the days of our youth were not thrilled with 
the words of Patrick Henry, "I repeat it sir, we must 
" fight ! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts 
" is all that is left us!" Step into the average Ameri- 
can church any time during the past five years and 
you might hear a pious invocation running about this 
wise : 

"We thank thee, O Lord, that under Divine Provi- 
" dence the shot fired from American cannon are bat- 
" tering down the walls of Satan's kingdom and open- 
" ing up the benighted regions of the earth to a knowl- 
" edge of the truth as it is in Jesus." 

The human race takes to blood as the duck takes 
to water. As the sow wallows in the mire so does 
every Christian nation on earth delight to wallow in 
the blood of every other Christian nation. Every 



56 Iniquity in High Places 

nation on earth is in essence and spirit a brutal ruf- 
fian, armed to the teeth, holding a glittering dagger 

at the throat of every other nation and watching with 
cat-like vigilance for an opportunity to inflict a deadly 
thrust. Every page of universal history is red with 
universal bloodshed. The monsters who have ravaged 
the face of the earth with fire and sword occupy the 
most conspicuous positions in the world's annals. A 
successful murderer at the head of a nation is invari- 
ably crowned with laurels by a brutish populace and 
smeared with benedictions by a truckling church. 
When the offspring of the she-wolf refuse to partake 
of the flesh of the lamb which their mother has 
brought to their den, when they gather in a group 
on one side and shed tears over the fate of the un- 
fortunate victim then will human wolves fail to ex- 
perience emotions of joy when they hear of the deeds 
of destruction, rapine and death wrought by their 
victorious armies in foreign lands. 

But though the war spirit is the most horrible trait 
in human nature, though it has time and again rained 
fire and blood upon every portion of the earth, though 
it has time and again broken up fountains of the 
great deep and rolled over the world a flood of liquid 
damnation, nevertheless the possession of that spirit 
must not be charged against mankind as a crime. A 
rattlesnake is not to blame for being a rattlesnake, a 
tiger is not to blame for being a tiger, and man is not 
to blame for being a bloodthirsty beast, for, to make 
use of vulgar parlance, God Almighty made him so. 



Iniquity in High Places' 57 

All the physical, mental and moral characteristics and 
traits in the constitution of man and in the constitu- 
tion of the whole universe are the absolutely exact 
mathematical results of the action of given and ade- 
quate causes. The true criminals are the rulers of na- 
tions who unchain the tiger, who pander to the base 
instincts of the vulgar herd, who kindle and fan the 
flame of war in order to gratify their personal ambi- 
tion or to advance their personal interests. To track 
to their lair some of these criminals whose deeds of 
iniquity have recently rendered them conspicuous in 
the eyes of the world is the object of this discussion 
and of this work. 

And it is a most noticeable and most important 
fact that among the masses of the people in the 
great nations of the earth, among the masses of the 
people in the so-called civilized nations of the earth, 
the war spirit is generally dormant and passive un- 
less called into life for sinister and fiendish pur- 
poses by the machinations of wicked rulers. Of 
course, savage tribes are always ready at a mo- 
ment's notice to fall into line for an attack upon 
their enemies. Savage tribes do not deem it neces- 
sary to waste precious time in the issuance of de- 
ceitful, hypocritical diplomatic notes as a prelimi- 
nary to the commencement of hostilities. And in 
some cases it is undoubtedly true that as between 
civilized nations there are slumbering embers of 
ancient animosity that can be easily quickened into 
a blaze. But it mav be laid down as a °-eneral 



58 'Iniquity in High Places 

rule in these latter days that if two nations become 
involved in war, that war is directly traceable to 
the wickedness, the fathomless iniquity of rulers. 

And it may be further observed that though the 
masses of the people are quiescent and indifferent 
during the discussion of issues that may be pend- 
ing between nations the moment these issues cul- 
minate in war the inherent beastliness of the hu- 
man race is quickened into activity as by an elec- 
tric shock and in the uncontrollable eagerness to 
engage in the shedding of human blood all ques- 
tion as to the merits or demerits of the strife are 
utterly ignored. When the tocsin of war is sound- 
ed the human animal rushes at once to the slaugh- 
ter, and questions of right or wrong no more affect 
his action than they affect the action of the canine 
appurtenance to the household, who, at the bidding 
of his master, is always prepared to make a ferocious 
attack upon any and every object that may come 
in view. Wars are made by knaves and fought 
by fools. On the first of January, 1859, Louis 
Xapoleon, the so-called Emperor of France, gave 
the usual Xew Year's reception to the foreign min- 
isters and embassadors resident in Paris. The 
members of the diplomatic body, arrayed in their 
official garb, attended the reception and made the 
addresses customarily delivered on such occasions. 
They tendered their congratulations to the Emper- 
or, expressed the hope that he would continue to 
enjoy happiness and prosperity, and conveyed to 



Iniquity in High Places 59 

him the assurance that the monarchs and govern- 
ments whom they represented were animated by 
nothing but the kindliest of feelings toward him and 
his people. To each of these speeches in turn the 
Emperor made reply in the same vein, with the 
same smooth and hollow professions of regard. 
But when the Austrian minister came forward and 
made a speech similar in spirit and expression to 
those of his fellow diplomats the Emperor replied 
that he was extremely happy to observe that be- 
tween his government and the government of 
Austria there was entire peace and harmony and 
friendship except in Italy. These words fell upon 
the ears of his startled audience like a thunderclap 
from a cloudless sky. It was seen at once that 
Louis Xapoleon had selected this occasion to an- 
nounce to the world that he intended to make an 
attack upon Austria. In fifteen minutes his words 
were telegraphed to every capital in Europe and 
the whole continent knew that war was about to 
come. Armies began to gather. The European 
governments were anxious to avert hostilities and a 
conference of the great powers was called, in the 
hope of accomplishing that object. But when the 
conference assembled it at once became apparent 
th.it it would avail nothing. The French delegates 
to the conference had evidently been instructed to 
accept no terms of settlement and to proffer no 
terms of settlement, but merely to waste time in 
useless and pointless verbiage. After repeated and 



60 Iniquity in High Places 

prolonged efforts to achieve some result the con- 
ference was abandoned in despair. At the last ses- 
sion of that body when the final adjournment was 
announced a momentary and solemn hush fell upon 
the assemblage. For the brief instant the dread 
of coming horrors was uppermost in every mind. 
The silence was broken by the voice of the Austri- 
an delegate as he turned to leave the hall : 

"It would be laughable, were it not attended 
with such serious consequences to mankind, to ob- 
serve into what hands Providence intrusts the des- 
tinies of nations." 

This cutting and caustic remark was of course 
aimed at Louis Napoleon, but it might, on occasion, 
be appropriately repeated in countries not located on 
the European continent. In six weeks from the ad- 
journment of that futile conference the war was 
raging. 

And though Louis Napoleon was the sole origi- 
nator of the war, though the French people had not 
been consulted in regard to the matter, though they 
had had no intimation that the struggle was about 
to come, though they had no cause of complaint 
against the Austrian government or against the peo- 
ples subject to that government, nevertheless, with 
the eagerness, zest and idiocy which is character- 
istic of human nature under such circumstances 
and which is especially characteristic of the Gallic 
nature they flung themselves, heart and soul, into 
the bloody strife. Wars are made by knaves and 



Iniquity in High Places 61 

fought by fools. In 1898, when the knaves at Wash- 
ington made that cowardly and piratical attack 
upon poor, old, dying Spain, simply because they 
knew that she was too weak and feeble to offer 
resistance, the fools throughout the country 
scrambled to get a drop of the miserable thimble- 
ful of fighting that accompanied the commission of 
that horrid crime. Hold out to any people on earth 
the prospect of obtaining a sup of human blood and 
they will follow their leaders to the lowest depths 
of criminality in order to gratify their tigerish ap- 
petite. 

But the believers in the final advent of universal 
peace may look for coming relief. The fact that 
the masses of mankind, though of bloodthirsty dis- 
position, cut no figure in the matter of initiating 
war, greatly simplifies the task of abolishing all war. 
The responsibility now rests upon rulers, and if all 
rulers were wise and upright and true and faithful 
men, if all rulers were sincerely and earnestly de- 
voted to the sacred work of improving the condi- 
tions of the human race, war would cease at once 
and forever. But greed is eternal in the human 
heart and wicked and selfish ambition will tempt 
rulers to plunge their countries into war in order 
to enhance their own personal glory and popularity 
and power. Rulers, then, must be hampered and 
manacled and fettered. When we have a Federa- 
tion of the World which shall specify the number of 
armed men that each nation shall be allowed to 



62 Iniquity in High Places 

maintain, for peace purposes only, which shall also 
establish courts with full authority to adjudicate all 
disputes between nations, we shall then have a hook 
in the jaw of every one of the wretches in power 
who in our day as in all days are seeking oppor- 
tunities to deluge the face of the earth with inno- 
cent blood. 



Self Defense the Only Legitimate Excuse for 
War. 

The most visionary optimist in regard to the fu- 
ture of the human race could hardly dream of a peri- 
od when all violence between man and man will dis- 
appear from the face of the earth. The most that can 
be rationally hoped for in this direction is that under 
the continuous workings of that law of progress that 
has brought man forward thus far in the line of de- 
velopment his ancient inherited beastly propensities 
will gradually become less and less prominent while 
his newly acquired tendencies to correct moral action 
will be rendered stronger and more effective and more 
binding. But a long road with many backslidings 
must be traveled before any perceptible change in hu- 
man nature will be revealed. An appalling daily record 
of crime and violence and brutality will yet continue 
to stare the world in the face. Burglars will ran- 
sack human habitations in search of spoils. Cowardly 
thieves will prowl by night and by day. Bold robbers 
will thrust their guns into the faces of victims, will 



Iniquity in High Places 63 

hold up railroad trains, will dynamite their way into 
bank vaults. Ancient grudges or newly sprung quar- 
rels will provoke incessant outbursts of physical vio- 
lence. Lifelong friends infuriated by sudden and un- 
controllable anger will draw deadly weapons upon each 
other and die in their boots. Murderers will drop 
poison into food or lie in ambush to await the ap- 
proach of the unsuspecting game. Rapists, negro or 
white, will commit their horrid crime. The law of 
brute force which is the absolute and only law in the 
world of animals is of fearful prevalence and potency 
in the world of men. 

But side by side and step by step with the develop- 
ment of the disposition which prevails among all ani- 
mals, man included, to attack and prey upon each other 
came the development of the disposition to resist such 
attack. Efforts at defense must have been coeval in 
time of origin with efforts at aggression. The love 
of life is universally developed in all the animate cre- 
ation. The love of life is an inducement to make ef- 
forts to preserve that life by avoiding or repelling 
danger. Self-preservation is said to be the first law 
of nature, and self-defense is a natural and often in- 
dispensable means of securing self-preservation. 
Writers on criminal jurisprudence concur in the state- 
ment that self-defense is founded on a law of nature 
which is superior to all human law and which, there- 
fore, can not be abolished by any legislative enactment. 
A person may repel force by force, and when feloni- 
ously attacked and in danger of immediate death may 



64 Iniquity in High Places 

kill his assailant. A man may repel force by force 
in defense of his person, his habitation or his property 
against all who attempt by violence to commit a known 
felony on either. A person when a forcible and atro- 
cious crime, such as robbery or murder, is attempted 
upon another individual in his presence, may interfere 
to prevent such crime, and will be justified though such 
interference may result in the death of the assailant. 
And if one man when violently and feloniously as- 
sailed, has the right to repel force by force in self-de- 
fense, then two men have the same right under the 
same circumstances ; then ten men, or a thousand men, 
or a million men have the same right; then a "govern- 
ment" has the right to repel force by force when the 
lives and homes and property of its people are wicked- 
ly and wantonly and feloniously assailed. 

But it is to be observed that the right of a "govern- 
ment" to repel force by force is a derivative right. It 
is a right delegated to the "government" by the in- 
dividual in whom the right is eternally inherent. It 
is a right conferred upon the "government" by the 
associated individuals who created that "government" 
and made that "government" their agent. To be sure, 
we are often told that "government" is of Divine ori- 
gin, that "government" is clothed with Divine author- 
itv. that "government" has a Divine mission to per- 
form. The American Imperialists who repudiate and 
ridicule the national love of liberty which we inherited 
from our forefathers expressly affirm that the individu- 
al exists only by sufferance of "government" and has 



Iniquity in High Places* 65 

no rights, powers or privileges except such as "govern- 
ment" may graciously vouchsafe and may at any time 
peremptorily withdraw. In the sense that the creation 
of all things, the creation of all life, the creation of 
all matter animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic, 
is ascribed to a deity — in such sense it may be said 
that "government" is of Divine origin and has a 
Divine mission to perform. But in the same sense 
it must be said that the rattlesnake is of Divine origin, 
and has a Divine' mission to perform. So the mosqui- 
to is of Divine origin and has a Divine mission. So 
the cholera germ, which finds lodgment in the hu- 
man vitals and there breeds its billions and trillions 
and quadrillions of progeny till every atom of the 
body is surcharged with poison, is of Divine origin 
and clothed with a Divine mission. And if "govern- 
ment" in the abstract sense of the term is of Divine 
origin then all "governments" are of Divine origin. 
Then the "governments" of Xerxes, of Nero, of Mo- 
hammed, of Tammerlane, were of Divine origin. Then 
the "government" of the Empress Dowager of China, 
of the Czar of Russia, of the Shah of Persia, of the 
Sultan of Turkey are of Divine origin. 

The simple facts of the case are that though "gov- 
ernment" may be a matter of overshadowing impor- 
tance, a matter of the most urgent necessity, neverthe- 
less, that "government" is purely a matter of human 
creation just as much as a pair of shoes is a matter 
of human creation. The relationship sub<i<ting be- 
tween the individual and "government" was never 



66 Iniquity in High Places 

more clearly and truly set forth than in the American 
Declaration of Independence from which we quote : 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident : That all 
" men are created equal ; that they are endowed by 
" their Creator with certain unalienable rights ; that 
" among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of hap- 
" piness. That to secure these rights governments are 
" instituted among men, deriving their just powers 
" from the consent of the governed ; that, whenever 
" any form of government becomes destructive of these 
" ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abol- 
" ish it, and to institute a new government, laying its 
" foundation on such principles, and organizing its 
" powers in such form as to them shall seem most 
" likely to effect their safety and happiness." 

There can be no mistake as to the signification of 
this language. The immortal Declaration expressly 
affirms that governments derive their just powers from 
the consent of the governed, which simply means that 
"government" can have no existence whatever until 
the breath of life is breathed into its nostrils by the 
people who create that government for their own pro- 
tection and benefit. The immortal Declaration goes 
farther and affirms that the people have the right to 
abolish any form of government and to establish new 
governments and to confer upon these new govern- 
ments such powers as they may see fit to grant them. 
The people then are the creator, and the government 
is the creature. In the individual man is to be found 
the germ of all power. In the individual man is to be 



Iniquity in High Places 67 

found the source, the fountain-head of all true and 
genuine governmental authority. Nay, even the puni- 
tive functions which are exercised by government are 
derived from the individual man. Alan has a right to 
punish crime. If you are one of a party of three per- 
sons traversing a wilderness a thousand miles from 
any human habitation and if the second man in the 
party deliberately and wilfully murders the third man 
you have the right to drop the murderer in his tracks. 
If a dozen men engage in an expedition to go to the 
Antarctic Continent to gather seal skins and if, while 
located on that distant land, over which no government 
claims any authority, one of their number willfully 
murders another the remaining ten persons have a 
right to administer proper and adequate punishment. 
If lynch-law were always administered with coolness, 
with deliberation, with wisdom, with discretion, with 
forbearance, with justice, it would be the ideal method 
of punishing crime. Justice, in such case, would not 
so often become hopelessly entangled in the meshes 
of legal technicalities and lawyers' quibbles. 

But while in extreme cases human life may be taken 
in self-defense no man has any moral right to kill his 
innocent and harmless child. Xo man has any moral 
right to kill his innocent and harmless neighbor. No 
man has any moral right to journey thousands of miles 
and kill the innocent and harmless people on the op- 
posite side of the globe. And if one man has no moral 
right to kill an innocent person then two men have no 
moral right to kill an innocent person. Then ten men 



68 Iniquity in High Places 

or a thousand men or a million men have no moral 
right to kill an innocent person. Then a "government" 
has no moral right to kill an innocent person. Then 
no "government," or nation, or people, has any moral 
right to adopt, unnecessarily, a line of action that nat- 
urally eventuates in the death of an innocent human 
being. And if a king or emperor or president or con- 
gressman is officially connected with the unnecessary 
adoption of a line of action that eventuates in the death 
of an innocent person then such king or emperor or 
president or congressman is an infamous murderer 
and deserves punishment as such. William McKinley 
had no moral right to send bodies of soldiery around 
the world for the purpose of forcibly and violently 
establishing a usurped authority over a race of men 
whose natural and eternal right to freedom was as 
clear and indisputable as that possessed by the Ameri- 
can people in the clays of the past or in the days of 
the present. William McKinley had no more moral 
right to send hired agents to kill the innocent and 
harmless Filipinos than he would have had to take his 
Henry rifle in his hand and, sauntering down the 
streets of his own town of Canton, in Ohio, amuse 
himself by shooting the children at play in their door- 
yards. A "government" has no moral right to take 
human life except in self-defense, just as an individual 
has no moral right to take human life except in self-de- 
fense. A "government" is simply the agent of the 
individuals by whom it was created, and as the indi- 
viduals have no moral riafht to commit willful murder 



Iniquity in High Places 69 

their agent has no moral right to commit willful mur- 
der. 

It is to be observed that we are speaking of the 
absence of all moral right to kill innocent and harm- 
less people. As to the existence of the legal power to 
commit this horrid crime there can be no question. It 
is universally assumed, we might say it has been eter- 
nally assumed that the first and chiefest function of 
every form of government on earth is to kill the peo- 
ple of another nation, race or tribe. The rudest and 
crudest semblance of government that developed 
among human animals just emerging from a condition 
of pure beasthood must have had human slaughter 
as its sole object. 

The first gleam of intelligence among human ani- 
mals was manifested in the forming of combinations 
to attack and rob and murder the human animals of 
another tribe. The earliest forms of government and 
the earliest forms of religion must have been sur- 
charged with a spirit of bloodthirstiness, and that same 
spirit of bloodthirstiness is revealed in all government- 
al and religious affairs even to the present day. The 
American Declaration of Independence distinctly rec- 
ognizes the war power as a legitimate and natural 
function of government. It says that the United 
American Colonies, as free and independent States, 
have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract 
alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts 
and things which independent states may of right do. 
The Constitution of the United States expressly pro- 



jo Iniquity in High Places 

vides that Congress shall have power to declare war, 
and there are absolutely no checks, restraints or limi- 
tations whatever upon the exercise of that power. In 
the exercise of that power the American Congress 
might direct that the names of the great nations of the 
earth be written upon separate strips of paper, that 
each of these strips be rolled up and fastened with a 
rubber band ; that the pellets thus formed be put in 
a glass jar and well shaken, that a blind man be em- 
ployed to take the pellets from the jar, that the names 
contained in these pellets be called off in succession as 
they are taken from the jar, and that war be declared 
against the nation whose name is last called. Such 
an act would not be one whit wickeder than what 
the American Congress has clone in recent years, and 
it would be infinitely less cowardly than what the 
American Congress has done. 

When in the grand march of human progress the 
race becomes so far advanced as to accept arbitration 
as the means of settling all international difficulties, 
when we have a Federation of the World, a Parlia- 
ment of the World and a Court of the World, then our 
various national constitutions will expressly prohibit 
declarations of war by the governments organized in 
pursuance of such constitutions. 

But in the meantime we affirm that no amount of 
constitutional authority, no amount of statutory au- 
thority, no amount of authority resting on world-wide, 
universal, eternal custom can in any degree mitigate 
the fiendish criminality of the wretch in power who 



Iniquity in High Places 71 

wickedly, willfully, wantonly, and in furtherance of 
his own selfish schemes of personal aggrandizement 
plunges any nation on earth into the horrors of un- 
necessary war. If all the rulers of all the so-called 
civilized nations of the earth were to meet for the pur- 
pose of devising ways and means to improve the cond 
tion of the human race every person in that as- 
semblage would be forced to admit that the greatest 
possible boon to all mankind would be the establish- 
ment of universal, eternal peace. And while awaiting 
a joint movement in this direction it is the duty of 
every individual ruler, of every individual nation, and 
of every individual of every nation to labor with un- 
flagging zeal and earnestness to avert any threatened 
resort to human bloodshed as a means of settling in- 
ternational difficulties. All public policy, all public 
acts and all public utterances bearing in any manner" 
upon the interests or sentiments or prejudices of the 
people of another nation should be so molded and 
shaped and modified as to furnish no ground for tak- 
ing offense. Of course there may be occasions when 
the use of reckless language would not engender any 
fear of alarming consequences. A member of the 
Arkansaw Legislature or of the Norwegian Storthing 
might indulge in a vehement philippic against the Sul- 
tan of Borrobooloo Gha, or the editor of the Confeder- 
ate Cross Roads Bugle or the White Horse Rapids 
Alaskan Patriot might revile the memory of Cetewayo, 
erstwhile chieftain of the South African Zulus, and 
the world would not waste time in listening: for the 



72 Iniquity in High Places 

cannon's boom in response. But if two great coun- 
tries lie in close geographical proximity, if they have 
rival interests if not antagonistic interests in every 
form of business, in every form of industry, in every 
form of production, in every form of trade and com- 
merce, if they have, deep-seated in their hearts, an 
inexhaustible fund of mutual jealousy, if they have, 
deep-seated in their hearts, an inexhaustible fund of 
latent, smoldering animosity handed down for gen- 
erations, from the era of the bloody conflicts that red- 
dened the pages of history for century after century, 
then if any friction or irritation is developing between 
them it is time for a pause and a hush. 

The Fashoda affair betwen England and France 
in 1898 furnishes an illustration. Lieut. Marchand, a 
French officer, with half-a-dozen Frenchmen and a 
couple hundred natives crossed the African continent 
from the French settlement in the valley of the Niger 
and reached Fashoda on the banks of the Nile. He 
there raised the French flag as a token of sovereignty. 
This act met with the most enthusiastic approbation 
of the French people. Marchand became at once the 
national idol, and he was everywhere hailed with loud 
acclaim as the champion of the interests and power 
and glory of France. But England was there. Eng- 
land was to be reckoned with. England claimed that 
the entire valley of the Nile from the Mediterranean 
Sea to the remotest fountain-heads of that river among 
the mountains of Southern Africa was Egypt or an 
appurtenance of Egypt, and Egypt was under the tute- 



Iniquity in High Places j^ 

lage and protection and authority of England. The 
English people regarded the act of Marchand in much 
the same light as the American people would regard 
the act of a party of Mexicans who should cross the 
American continent from Chihuahua, and, locating on 
the banks of the Mississippi River, should there fling 
the Mexican banner to the breeze to indicate that they 
had assumed dominion over that section of country. 
England called for the departure of Marchand from 
Fashoda and from the Nile valley. Here was an im- 
pending crisis. Here was an occasion for a pause and 
a hush. Every man in England from the king on the 
throne to the beggar in the streets of London should 
have spoken on the subject with bated breath. Every 
man in France should have exhibited the same spirit. 
The discussion of the question at issue between the 
two nations should have been conducted with every 
manifestation of mutual respect and deference. There 
should have been no bluster, no swagger, no bravado, 
no arrogance, no insolence, no taunts, no sneers, no 
threats, no defiance, no indulgence in abusive, offen- 
sive, insulting language, no attempts to intimidate or 
humiliate, no attempts to irritate or aggravate or ex- 
asperate. And if any villainous manager of a public 
journal in England or any villainous manager of a 
public journal in France should have devoted all his 
energies to the fiendish task of plunging the two 
countries into a wicked, unnecessary war, if he had 
in every issue scattered firebrands of agitation through- 
out the land, if he had in every issue published column 



74 Iniquity in High Places 

after column of false, manufactured telegrams, pur- 
porting to give an account of the outrages and atro- 
cities committed by the rival country, if he had in 
every issue called on the people to rush to arms and 
ravage the face of the earth with fire and sword in 
order to assert the dignity of the nation and vindicate 
"the honor of the flag," or if any villainous demagogue 
on the floor of the British Parliament or any villainous 
demagogue on the floor of the French National As- 
sembly had given utterance to a wolfish howl for blood 
in order that he might stir up the beastly passions of 
the brutal rabble, if he had given utterance to a wolf- 
ish howl for blood in order that he might pose before 
the world as the champion of his country's rights and 
the avenger of his country's wrongs, if he had given 
utterance to a wolfish howl for blood in order that 
he might gain political renown and political power 
and political promotion, every such wretch should have 
had the word "outlaw" burned into his' brazen cheek, 
should have been driven with universal scorn beyond 
the pale of human civilization, and "not with a whip, 
" but with a tail should have been lashed naked around 
" the world." 

The Fashoda affair between England and France 
in 1898 was peaceably settled. But in that same year 
a very different affair was developed on the western 
side of the Atlantic. In 1898 the United States made 
a most infamous and piratical attack upon Spain. In 
1898 the villainous managers of the American press 
and the villainous demagogues of the American Con- 



Iniquity in High Places 75 

gress were marshaled in full force, and finally obtained 
control of the country through the aid and connivance 
of a worthless, weak and wicked national executive. 
The Fashoda affair was a legitimate occasion for 
war, according to all the traditions of all the nations 
in all ages. The Cuban affair was not a legitimate 
occasion for war, according to any human tradition 
or according to any human principle. Yet the Fashoda 
affair ended in peace, while the Cuban affair ended in 
blood. It may be said that this circumstance does 
not show that the people of Europe are any less blood- 
thirsty than the people of America. It may be said 
that France and England, in maintaining peace, were 
governed by prudential considerations. These na- 
tions feared that if war were commenced all the powers 
of Europe would finally be drawn into the con- 
flict, with consequences that would be appalling 
beyond human conception. But it may be said that 
America is no more affected by prudential considera- 
tions than by scruples of conscience. The geograph- 
ical isolation of America furnishes absolute security 
against hostile attack by any power on earth, and 
therefore in this western world the natural, tigerish 
appetite of the human race for human blood can be 
gratified to the full whenever and wherever a helpless 
and unoffending victim can be found. 

But far above all mere prudential considerations, 
far nobler and higher and weightier than prudential 
considerations are the moral obligations resting on 
all rulers to strive for the maintenance of universal 



76 Iniquity in High Places 

peace throughout the world, now and forevermore. 
And the recipe, the prescription for the maintenance 
of universal peace can be couched in the briefest pos- 
sible terms. It is simply this, that the powers and 
potentates of the earth in their dealings with each 
other should be governed by the rules of action laid 
down in the Sermon on the Mount. The model ruler, 
in his public life, in his official life, should be inspired 
by the same conscientious sense of duty, by the same 
spirit of benevolence and good-will and fraternal love 
as that which animates the model citizen in his deal- 
ings with his fellow-men in private life. He should 
be mild and gentle and unassuming in his demeanor, 
in his language, in his acts. He should be liberal, 
generous and friendly in every respect. He should 
be forbearing and forgiving, patient and long-suffer- 
ing, ready to return good for evil. He should no 
more think of setting the machinery of war in mo- 
tion than a model private citizen would think of 
drawing a deadly weapon and shooting right and left 
in return for a fancied or pretended or imaginary 
affront. In short, a good and true government in its 
dealings with other governments should do just what 
a good and true man would do in his dealings with 
other men. 

A recent writer has discoursed upon this subject in 
strong and pertinent language: 

"A nation is exactly like a man. It has peace or 
" gets into strife in the same way and for the same 
" sort of reasons. 



Iniquity in High Places 77 

"Xo man that respects his neighbor's rights as scru- 
'• pulously as his own has any trouble in preserving 
"that peace. 

"Xo man that is just, kindly, reasonable, open to 
" argument, courteous, willing to grant anybody else 
" all that he demands for himself, generous toward 
" weak men, tolerant toward all men — no such man 
" ever gets into trouble with his neighbor. 

"Fighting is the most unnecessary thing in the 
" world ; also the most foolish, time-wasting, energy- 
wasting and altogether absurd in men and rrrurder- 
ous in a nation. 

"If the Czar of Russia when he appealed to the 
world to put an end to war, really meant what he 
said, he should have then and there announced that 
hereafter his country would not attempt to steal 
another nation's territory. 

"That henceforth it would not maneuver, lie, cheat, 
swindle, or trample upon the weak in order to en- 
large its boundaries. 

"That hereafter it would not tolerate oppression 
anywhere, but all men under its flag should have 
absolute and perfect justice, absolute protection in 
their various walks of life, no matter what might be 
their belief. 

"That hereafter no Finland should be oppressed, no 
Manchuria grabbed, no Poland or Circassia or Turk- 
estan subjugated and trampled down, no man-steal- 
ing and land-stealing practised by Russia anywhere 
in the world. 



78 Iniquity in High Places 

"That hereafter in the view of Russia violence 
" against the weak anywhere in the world would be 
" regarded as the most detestable of crimes. 

"He should have said that thereafter in Russia 
" knowledge would be the only desirable pursuit, jus- 
" tice the law of land, the liberty and progress of the 
" people the chief concern of the government. 

"He should have denounced as infamous and foul 
" and revolting the theory that size and strength give 
" one nation the right to seize the territory of another 
" less fortunate in these respects, and that for a nation 
" to disregard its pledges is just as detestable and dis- 
" graceful as for a man to be a liar. 

"He should have pointed out that building empires 
" is not the chief aim of life ; that theft is theft, by a 
" nation or by a man." 

In an address upon education President Eliot of 
Harvard University clearly sets forth the moral obli- 
gation resting upon nations : 

"Every child should be taught that what is virtue 
" in one human being is virtue in any group of human 
" beings, large or small — a village, a city or a nation ; 
" that the ethical principles which should govern our 
" empire are precisely the same as those which should 
" govern an individual ; and that selfishness, greed, 
" falseness, brutality and ferocity are as hateful and 
" degrading in a multitude as they are in a single 
" savage." 

The Superintendent of Public Instruction in the 
Department of Marne, in France, issued to the teachers 



Iniquity in High Places 79 

under his charge the following admirable circular 
which shows a clear perception of the moral responsi- 
bility of men in authority: 

"I request the teachers to see to the removal from 
- the walls of the schools of all pictures representing 
" scenes of violence. In one school I counted, in fif- 
" teen engravings, fourteen that gave beheadings, 
" tortures, massacres and treacherous murders. 
'• These engravings are generally hung up to illus- 
" trate history, but are historically false and ridicu- 
" lous. But were they even true in every respect, 
" they should none the less be removed from the 
" schoolrooms. We should be careful not to 
" familiarize children with sights of violence and 
" ferocity. The brutal instincts of the human race 
" are not yet sufficiently weakened or crowded out 
" by higher ones to admit of our placing before the 
•• eyes of the young scenes of murder and other 
" atrocities. Our moral law is based on the irrepeal- 
" able law of absolute respect for human life. We 
" should teach children that unjust war is a horrible 
" inheritance of ancestral brutality, and that a nation 
'■ which takes up arms without having first tried 
" every means of conciliation, without having made 
" strenuous efforts to settle differences by arbitra- 
" tion, commits an abuse of force. That nation dis- 
" honors itself. It places itself beyond the pale of 
" reason and humanity, and its conduct is bestial. 
" Instil into the consciences of children — which, be 
" assured, will receive it — this truth, in which the 



80 Iniquity in High Places 

" safety of civilization lies, namely, that a nation has 
•' an inviolable soul, and that all abuse of force com- 
" mitted against a nation is an act of brigandage." 

Xo one will dispute the correctness of our posi- 
tion. No one will deny that every upright, faithful, 
conscientious, beneficent, self-sacrificing ruler — every 
ruler devoted, heart and soul, to the welfare of his 
country and to the welfare of the whole human race, 
will strive to avoid shedding blood in his official 
capacity as earnestly as he would strive to avoid 
shedding blood in his private capacity. Every good 
and wise ruler, every truly and sincerely philanthropic 
ruler, every ruler who regards the power placed in 
his hands as a sacred trust, will strive to avoid any 
line of policy or line of action that threatens to 
engender or rekindle animosity between nations. He 
will strive to allay any dangerous popular excitement, 
any dangerous manifestations of that spirit of blood- 
thirstiness which is eternally rooted in the human 
heart. The righteous ruler will abhor war as the 
greatest curse of mankind. 

But all rulers are not righteous, as is abundantly 
shown by our own experience in these United States. 
And among the unrighteous men in power in the lat- 
ter half of the last century a conspicuous position 
must be assigned to Louis Napoleon, the counterfeit 
Emperor of France. He was a man in whom it may 
be said that not even a microscopic trace of any kind 
of virtue could ever be found. He was an unprin- 
cipled adventurer, a perjurer, a traitor, a usurper, a 



Iniquity in High Places 81 

murderer, a despot. He overthrew the established 
government of his country by armed force, and ruled 
for twenty years. He gained something of prestige 
by joining hands with the English in carrying on the 
Crimean war against Russia in 1854. He gained 
something of prestige by waging war against Austria 
in 1859. But as the years elapsed, his grasp on 
France steadily weakened. In the spring of 1870 his 
throne seemed tottering to a fall. The whole nation 
was becoming restive under his control. The op- 
position to his government was daily becoming bolder 
and more pronounced and more outspoken. Paris, 
which is always in favor of a republican form of gov- 
ernment, was now a seething caldron of discontent 
and incipient revolution. At no point on his dark 
political horizon could Louis Napoleon discover a ray 
of light, a gleam of hope. 

But at this juncture a wholly unexpected incident 
occurred, which he welcomed as a godsend and which 
he seized upon as a drowning man is said to grasp 
a straw. The throne of Spain was vacant. Queen 
Isabella had abdicated or resigned her sovereignty. 
The Spanish Ministry was searching for a new ruler. 
The crown had been offered to several European 
princes, but had been declined. On July 4, 1870, the 
Spanish Ministry resolved to propose to the Spanish 
Cortes the name of Prince Leopold Hohenzollern- 
Sigmaringen, a distant relative of the King of Prus- 
sia, as candidate for the Spanish throne. Here was 
Louis Napoleon's golden opportunity. He could 



82 Iniquity in High Places 

now step into the breach, sword in hand, and de- 
nounce the occupancy of the Spanish throne by a Ger- 
man prince as a menace to France, and he could pose 
as the rescuing champion of his endangered country. 
On July 6, he sent his Prime Minister, Emile Ollivier, 
and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Duke de Gramont, 
to the French Corps Legislatif, where they declared 
that the candidacy of a prince of the House of Hohen- 
zollern agreed upon without the knowledge of the 
French government would be injurious to the honor 
and influence of the French nation. The statement 
was utterly groundless and absurd. Time was when 
such a protest might have been pertinent. ' Five hun- 
dred years ago, if a powerful sovereign were to place 
a relative on the throne of a neighboring nation, it 
might be said that he thereby virtually annexed that 
nation to his own dominions. Five hundred years ago 
the masses of the people in all countries were mere 
puppets and slaves, whose only sense of duty was to 
render blind and unquestioning obedience to the dic- 
tates of rulers. But times have changed, and people 
have changed, and governments have changed. In 
all civilized countries there is now a power behind the 
throne that is stronger than the throne itself. In 
all civilized countries there is now an all-powerful 
public opinion, to whose slightest whisper the haughti- 
est of despots intently listens, and to whose expressed 
wish he reverentially defers. The sovereign is no 
longer the state. The sovereign is but a fraction of 
the state. The sovereign, to retain his hold upon 



Iniquity in High Places 83 

power, must identify himself with the people and be- 
come one of the people. If, in these days, a prince 
of one nation is elected to the throne of another na- 
tion, it is necessary for him to cut entirely loose from 
the land of his birth and to affiliate wholly and totally 
and solely with the people of the land of his adoption. 
If to-morrow an English prince, or a Swedish prince, 
or a Russian prince, were elected to the throne of 
Spain, and were to make the attempt to conduct the 
affairs of that country in subserviency or subordina- 
tion to the interests of his native land, his leasehold 
upon royal power would not be worth an hour's pur- 
chase. The pretense of Louis Napoleon that France 
was in danger from the Spanish Succession in 1870 
was a transparent sham. But it apparently promised 
to serve his purpose. It apparently promised to win 
him popularity. It received a good degree of sup- 
port from the French people. 

Sagasta, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
on July 7 sent a dispatch to Paris, declaring that 
Prince Leopold was the free choice of the Spanish 
government, and had been elected without consulta- 
tion or negotiation with any other power in Europe. 
Shortly after this the Prussian Government issued a 
circular declaring that Prussia had no part whatever 
in selecting Prince Leopold. These statements were 
entirely unheeded by Louis Napoleon, whose grand 
object was to create and intensify difficulties and con- 
troversies and strife, hoping thereby to enhance his 
own personal power and prestige. On July 9 he 



84 Iniquity in High Places 

directed Count Benedetti, the French Ambassador to 
Prussia, to demand of King William that he forbid 
Prince Leopold's acceptance of the Spanish crown. 
The King refused, declaring that he had no right to 
give orders to a prince of Hohenzollern who was of 
age. On July 12 Prince Leopold declined to be a 
candidate for the Spanish throne. The whole world 
now supposed as a matter of course that this Spanish 
affair was completely and peacefully settled. But 
not so with Louis Napoleon. In American mining 
parlance, he had struck a streak of pay ore and he 
was determined to work it for all it was worth. He 
was determined that the incident should not be closed 
till he had reaped more personal advantage therefrom. 
He was determined to push matters to extremes. He 
now demanded that the King of Prussia should give 
a written guaranty that no prince of the House of 
Hohenzollern should ever thereafter become a candi- 
date for the throne of Spain. There could be no mis- 
take as to the object of this insulting demand. Its 
object was to browbeat and humiliate and entail dis- 
grace upon the King of Prussia. Its object was to 
announce to the world that Louis Napoleon was lord 
and master, and the King of Prussia was his serf. 
The Prussian Ministry refused to receive the demand, 
and refused to lay it before the King. On July 15 
Louis Napoleon declared war against Prussia. In six 
weeks from that date a German prison opened its 
portals to welcome him to its gloomy depths, and the 
curtain dropped forever on his farce of imperialism. 



Iniquity in High Places 85 

Louis Napoleon made the war of 1870 in order to 
increase his political power, just as William McKinley 
made the war of 1898 in order to increase his political 
power. Louis Napoleon was the wilful and deliberate 
murderer of every one of the thousands and tens of 
thousands of human beings who perished in the Ger- 
man-French war of 1870, just as William McKinley 
was the wilful and deliberate murderer of every one 
of the thousands and tens of thousands of human 
beings who perished in the American-Spanish-Fili- 
pino wars, commencing in 1898. Louis Napoleon 
made the war of 1870 of his own volition, on his own 
motion, while William McKinley made the war of 
1898 as the pliant, ready, servile tool of the vilest crop 
of demagogues that the fertile soil of America ever 
produced. We have touched upon the deeds of the 
great French criminal in order to develop a standard 
wherewith to fathom the iniquity of the greatest 
of American criminals. 

But we have a later illustration of the malfeasance 
of public officials in the matter of maintaining peace 
between nations. On the sixteenth day of October, 
1891, an American war vessel, the Baltimore, Com- 
mander W. S. Schley, was lying at anchor in the har- 
bor of Valparaiso. Two boatloads of the crew were 
permitted to go ashore. On landing they repaired to 
a low drinking saloon, where they became involved 
in a quarrel with the Chileans. An American seaman 
is said to have knocked down a Chilean. In an instant 
the Chileans rushed upon the Americans, who were 



86 Iniquity in High Places 

greatly outnumbered, unarmed and incapable of self- 
defense. The mob swelled in numbers rapidly. The 
Americans attempted to escape. They endeavored to 
board a street-car. They were caught and pulled off 
the car. The American who is said to have struck 
the first blow was shot and instantly killed. Another 
man was fatally stabbed in the back. Three or four 
-more were dangerously wounded, and fifteen men 
were slightly wounded. The police finally quelled the 
riot. 

There were certain antecedent circumstances that 
contributed to the commission of these horrid deeds 
of violence and blood. Chile was just emerging from 
the throes of civil war. The Chilean President, Bal- 
maceda, had quarreled with the Chilean Congress, 
which refused to pass measures that he recommended. 
Balmaceda usurped absolute authority, made himself 
dictator, issued decrees and carried them into execu- 
tion by means of the army. He confiscated the prop- 
erty of his opponents, and even put them to death. 
The Chilean navy supported the cause of the Congress, 
and to escape from Balmaceda the Congress went on 
board .the ships of war and sailed to the north, near 
the borders of Bolivia, where they made their head- 
quarters. The immense majority of the people of 
Chile favored Congress, and large numbers of men 
found their way to the northward, where they enlisted 
in the rapidly-growing Congressional army. The 
city of Valparaiso was in the power of Balmaceda, 
though the people were strong supporters of the Con- 



Iniquity in High Places 87 

gress. The people of Valparaiso observed that Com- 
mander W. S. Schley, of the American warship Balti- 
more, was on very friendly terms with Balmaceda, and 
they imbibed the impression that he was rendering 
assistance to the usurper. When the Congress had 
collected an army large enough to warrant entering 
upon an active campaign, their troops came down from 
the north on board the ships of war and landed at a 
point on the coast, a short distance below Valparaiso. 
Commander Schley steamed out of Valparaiso har- 
bor, went down to the place of landing, watched the 
debarkation of the Congressional troops, and returned 
to his anchorage. The people of Valparaiso imagined 
that the American commander was acting as a spy for 
Balmaceda. In a few days a decisive battle was 
fought, and Balmaceda was utterly defeated. He 
subsequently committed suicide in order to escape 
falling into the hands of his enemies. On the night 
after the battle a mob of soldiery inaugurated a reign 
of terror in Valparaiso, pillaging houses and murder- 
ing people. Six hundred men, women and children 
are said to have been killed. The Congress now as- 
sumed control of the country, and elected a new 
President. Turbulence and lawlessness did not im- 
mediately disappear. Confiscation and death were 
visited upon some of the supporters of Balmaceda in 
retaliation for the crimes he had committed upon his 
opponents. 

It was a few weeks after these events that Com- 
mander Schley permitted his men to go ashore. It 



88 Iniquity in High Places 

would seem to have been an act of folly and madness 
on his part. He could hardly have failed to have been 
aware of the fact that the people of Valparaiso cher- 
ished more or less of hostile feeling toward him and 
his ship and his crew. He must have been in con- 
stant communication with the American Minister to 
Chile, with the American Consul at Valparaiso, and 
with the American business men resident in that city, 
and from them he must have learned something in re- 
gard to the tone and temper of the public mind. In 
allowing his men to go ashore under these circum- 
stances, he virtually became responsible for the blood- 
shed that followed. 

But the riot having occurred, Commander Schley 
should have immediately called upon the Chilean gov- 
ernment to investigate the matter. The American 
Minister should have also called upon the Chilean gov- 
ernment to investigate. The government of the 
United States, to which all American citizens in for- 
eign countries look for protection in their persons and 
property, should have called for an investigation. 
And the communication which the American govern- 
ment should have sent to Chile should have been 
worded in accordance with the directions, which we 
have previously prescribed, namely, that all rulers and 
governments, in their dealings with each other, should 
conduct themselves in the same kindly, friendly, gentle 
and fraternal spirit which good and true men exhibit 
in their private dealings. The communication to Chile 
should have been worded about in this wise: 



Iniquity in High Places 89 

"The United States respectfully and earnestly re- 
" quests of the government of Chile that a rigid in- 
" vestigation into the facts and circumstances of the 
" murder of American seamen in the streets of Val- 
" paraiso be instituted ; that the guilty parties be fer- 
" reted out and punished ; and that all possible repara- 
" tion be made for the injuries inflicted." 

Such a communication, expressed in such language, 
is precisely what should pass between two friendly 
nations, and could not be considered as affording any 
ground for taking offense. But the communication 
which zcas sent to Chile was of a different tenor. On 
the twenty-third of October, 1891, the government of 
the United States instructed the American Minister to 
demand of the Chilean government whether it could 
give any 

" explanation of an event, which had deeply pained 
" the people of the United States, not only by reason 
" that it resulted in the death of one of our sailors and 
" the pitiless wounding of others, but even more as an 
" apparent expression of unfriendliness toward this 
" government, which might put in peril the mainte- 
" nance of amicable relations be! ween the two 
" countries." 

This communication commenced with an insult and 
concluded with a threat. It is the height of absurdity 
to call upon any government for an explanation of a 
deed of mob violence. Deeds of mob violence show 
for themselves only too plainly. It is a common char- 
acteristic of mob action that it is sudden, unexpected, 



90 Iniquity in High Places 

spontaneous, explosive. You might as well call upon 
a government for an explanation of a shock of an 
earthquake or the stroke of a thunderbolt as to call 
for an explanation of the deeds of a mob. You might 
as well call upon the French government for an ex- 
planation of the volcanic eruption that overwhelmed 
the city of St. Pierre, in the island of Martinique, or 
call upon the American government for an explanation 
of the hundred-mile-per-hour hurricane that drove the 
waters of the Gulf over the city of Galveston. The 
government of Chile was no more concerned in the 
inception of the Valparaiso riot than was the govern- 
ment of Switzerland or the government of Roumania. 
All that any government can do, under such circum- 
stances, is to administer effective punishment to the 
leaders in the work of violence, and to make ample 
reparation for all damages. 

It will be observed that the communication which 
Ben Harrison sent to the American Minister con- 
tained the words "to demand of the Chilean govern- 
ment whether it could give any explanation." This 
really means to demand an explanation. The word- 
ing of the paragraph was simply a clumsy and futile 
attempt to conceal the point of the insult by means of 
diplomatic circumlocution. To demand an explana- 
tion is ordinarily an insult. To stop a man on the 
street and demand an explanation is to insinuate or 
intimate that he has been guilty of improper or illegal 
conduct. To demand an explanation is to court hos- 
tilities unless you have your foot securely and im- 



Iniquity in High Places 91 

movably planted on the other man's neck. Of a friend, 
you ask for information. Of an enemy you might de- 
mand an explanation if you are spoiling for a fight. 
The concluding portion of Harrison's communication 
was a veiled threat of war. 

The reply of the Chilean government was curt and 
snappy. The reply of Chile was that the government 
of the United States made demands and advanced 
threats that were not acceptable, and could not be ac- 
cepted in the present case, nor in any case of like 
nature ; that the affair would be investigated and dealt 
with according to the procedure of the municipal law 
of Chile ; that the result of the inquiry would be com- 
municated to the United States government, without 
recognizing, however, any right of intervention in 
the course of justice. 

Here was laid the foundation for a diplomatic quar- 
rel, if not for something far more serious. The 
question was discussed with bitterness and rancor be- 
tween the two governments for some time. It was 
finally settled. Chile convicted and punished three 
leaders of the mob, and paid seventy-five thousand 
dollars in gold to be distributed among the American 
sufferers. 

The part which Ben Harrison played in this matter 
was not a blunder. It was a crime. Ben Harrison 
was playing to the galleries. He was a candidate for 
re-election as President of the United States, and he 
thought he would pose as the champion of outraged 
and injured America, just as Louis Napoleon tried to 



92 Iniquity in High Places 

pose as the champion of injured France. Ben Harri- 
son knew that when the report of the murder of 
American seamen in the streets of Valparaiso was cir- 
culated throughout the United States there would 
come up from every square acre of American soil a 
volume of curses loud and deep upon all Chile and 
all Chileans. He thought he could coin this animosity 
into votes, and therefore he would allow the animosity 
to develop and strengthen. 

Just at this juncture there appeared above the sur- 
face — and we might appropriately say above the sur- 
face of the bottomless pit — the hideous visage of the 
American Satanic press, the most potent agency on 
earth for infecting and impregnating every atom in the 
constitution of human society with unspeakable and 
irremediable moral rottenness. The grand object of 
the American Satanic press on this occasion was 
clearly to open up an era of bloodshed by plunging 
the country into war. The motive which prompted 
the American Satanic press was pure fiendishness, 
pure, unmitigated diabolism. The motive which 
prompted the American Satanic press was identical 
in every respect with the motive which might induce 
an individual to set fire to a crowded hotel in order 
that he might amuse himself by watching the people 
jumping from the upper stories to their death upon 
the sidewalk. The Satanic press raised a prolonged, 
wolfish howl for blood. In their every issue appeared 
sensational headlines, which ran about in this wise : 



Iniquity in High Places 93 

WAR ! WAR ! WAR ! 



More Chilean Outrages 



7^1 



10,000 AMERICAN TROOPS CROSSING THE CONTINENT BY 

RAIL TO SAN FRANCISCO TO TAKE 

SHIP FOR CHILE! 



FLEET OF IRON-CLADS PASSING AROUND CAPE HORN TO 

AVENGE THE CRIMES COMMITTED 

UPON AMERICANS ! 



GREAT ACTIVITY IN THE NAVAL AND WAR DEPART- 
MENTS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE 
UNITED STATES. 

Day after day and week after week the Satanic 
Press spread broadcast throughout the country its 
perversions of facts, its absolute falsehoods, its inflam- 
matory appeals designed to excite the popular senti- 
ment up to that point that war could not be avoided. 
The persistence of the Satanic Press in this line of 
action could not fail to produce more or less evil fruit. 
Ic is said that the constant dropping of water will wear 
away the hardest rock. It is said that the constant 
iteration and reiteration of falsehood will finally effect 
a lodgment of that falsehood in the human soul, and 
make that falsehood a part of the human belief. It 
is said that the constant parading and exhibition of 
the most odious and offensive vices before human 



94 Iniquity in High Places 

eyes will finally kindle sympathetic emotions in the 
human breast. The American Satanic Press was mak- 
ing headway in its work of diabolism. 

Here was an opportunity for the President of the 
United States to perform an obvious duty. We have 
heretofore affirmed that the highest, holiest, most sa- 
cred obligation resting upon all the rulers of the world 
is to maintain universal peace among the nations ; to 
frown down all wild and reckless agitation that 
threatens to result in bloody conflict; to endeavor to 
remove all causes of irritation, and to allay all dan- 
gerous excitement. 

The true ruler will keep his finger on the popular 
pulse and be prepared at all times to check any fever- 
ish symptoms. If Ben Harrison had been a man fit 
for his exalted position he would not have hesitated 
an instant to take the proper steps to draw the fangs 
and neutralize the venom of the serpents of the Sa- 
tanic Press. He would have written a brief note, 
nominally addressed to some friend, but in reality in- 
tended for publication throughout the entire country. 
That note should have been worded in about the fol- 
lowing manner : 

Dear Sir: 

There is absolutely no occasion whatever for an- 
ticipating any difficulty between the United States and 
Chile growing out of the terrible tragedy in the streets 
of Valparaiso. The United States and Chile have ever 
been on terms of entire friendship, and there is no 
prospect or likelihood that this friendship will ever be 



Iniquity in High Places 95 

impaired. We may rest assured that the government 
of Chile will do everything in its power to discover 
and punish the perpetrators of the recent crime, and 
will make full amends in all other respects. 

(Signed) Benjamin Harrison. 

If Ben Harrison had been man enough, and candid 
enough, and truthful enough to make this simple 
statement of the simple facts, the villainous utterances 
of the American Satanic Press would have been in- 
stantly silenced, and the incipient war-cloud that was 
gathering over the continent would have disappeared 
like the mists of the morning. 

But Ben Harrison did nothing of the kind. He ut- 
tered no syllable. More than three months after the 
affair in Valparaiso he sent a special message to Con- 
gress, five mortal columns in length and devoted en- 
tirely to denunciations of Chile, when we had no 
ground whatever for any kind of complaint against 
Chile. Ben Harrison was evidently in hopes that the 
war excitement would wax fiercer and fiercer. He 
was evidently desirous of feeding and fanning the 
flame of war till it should get beyond control. And 
this stupendous treachery to the sacred duties of his 
position, to the sacred duties resting on all rulers 
throughout the world to strive for the maintenance 
of universal peace, marks him as a cold-blooded wretch 
whose name should be damned to everlasting infamy. 

If Ben Harrison had succeeded in plunging the 
country into war, if he had succeeded in killing and 
mangling twenty thousand Americans, if he had sue- 



96 Iniquity in High Places 

ceeded in killing and mangling fifty thousand Chileans, 
if he had succeeded in bombarding and burning half 
a dozen coast cities in Chile, if he had succeeded in 
driving a hundred thousand Chilean women and chil- 
dren from their homes to perish from exposure and 
starvation, if he had succeeded in adding a thousand 
million dollars to the national debt — if he had done 
all this he would have been hailed as a second savior. 
If he had done all this, the American people would 
have prostrated themselves with their faces in the 
dust before his throne and worshiped him as a god. 
If he had done all this he would have been triumph- 
antly re-elected President of the United States in 1892 
simply because he was the greatest murderer of the 
age, just as William McKinley was triumphantly re- 
elected President of the United States in 1900 simply 
because he was the greatest murderer of the age. 

"A successful murderer at the head of a nation is 
invariably crowned with laurels by a brutish populace 
and smeared with benedictions by a truckling church." 
There is no nation or race of men on earth that will 
not crawl over the cold and clammy corpses of thou- 
sands and tens of thousands of their dead countrymen 
to lick the feet of the murderous ruler who has 
brought to them the spoils of victory gathered in the 
most infamous, most iniquitous, most horrible of wars. 
No armed force sent abroad by any nation on earth 
to wage war upon the people of a foreign land can 
possibly commit crimes enough to turn the stomachs 
of the people at home. The soldier may have killed 



Iniquity in High Places 97 

men by scores, he may have ravished women, he may 
have burned houses, he may have impaled infants on 
the point of his bayonet and carried their dead bodies 
dangling over his shoulder, but when he returns to 
his native land he is a brave, noble and devoted pa- 
triot. He has vindicated the national honor. He has 
added new glories to the flag. He has opened the 
way for the spread of the blessed Gospel of Jesus 
Christ. Look at the horrible deeds of atrocity com- 
mitted in China in the year 1900 by the soldiers of 
Christendom on their march from the shores of the 
sea to Peking to rescue the foreign ministers from 
threatened destruction by Boxer mobs. See how they 
pillaged towns and cities. See how they ravaged the 
land with fire and sword, slaughtering the innocent 
and helpless Chinese country people in all directions. 
See how they attacked Chinese women, who jumped 
into wells to escape from these chosen and glorious 
evangels of Christian light and Christian liberty and 
Christian love and Christian holiness and Christian 
graces. See how they dragged gray-headed old China- 
men by their cues through the streets, and prodded 
them to death with bayonets. See how they picked 
up babes by the heels and beat out their brains upon 
the sidewalks. And when these Christian soldiers re- 
turned to their Christian homes in distant lands they 
nowhere met with a single word of rebuke or reproof. 
But this bloodthirstiness of the human animal calls 
for hardly more than a modified and qualified con- 
demnation. It's the nature of the beast. As we have 



98 Iniquity in High Places 

previously said, the rattlesnake is not to blame for 
being a rattlesnake, the tiger is not to blame for being 
a tiger, and man is not to blame for being a blood- 
thirsty beast, for, to make use of common parlance, 
God Almighty made him such. For untold millions 
and millions of years man was a beast among beasts, 
and when the tocsin of war is now sounded he imme- 
diately loses all the nobler impulses, abandons all the 
restraints of civilization, and retrogrades and relapses 
and recurs to his original beastliness. The physical, 
mental and moral traits and characteristics of man 
are the natural, logical, inevitable outgrowth of the 
action of given and adequate causes. The nature of 
man is the mathematical result, the mathematical foot- 
ing up and sum total of the effects of the conditions 
which have environed him through all his life on this 
planet from the remotest period when he was but a 
crawling germ down to the present day. 

The true criminals are the wicked rulers of the 
world who pander to human beastliness, who stir up 
and excite human beastliness, and let it loose to deluge 
the face of the earth with blood in order to advance 
their own personal interests and increase their own 
personal power and prominence. The history of the 
human race is nothing but a record of these deeds of 
wickedness. And the perpetrators of these deeds are 
to be found at the present day, as they were to be 
found at any and all periods in times past. War is 
wholesale murder. Ben Harrison was a great criminal 
by reason of wholesale murder attempted. William 



Iniquity in High Places 99 

McKinley was the greatest of criminals by reason of 
wholesale murder accomplished. 

And it is the case of William McKinley that we 
now propose to take under consideration. All our 
previous discussions have been simply preparatory and 
introductory to an investigation of this man's conduct 
and career. We are all familiar with the prevailing 
drift of public expression in regard to McKinley. He 
is everywhere the object of the most fulsome eulogy. 
His alleged virtues are daily rehearsed in terms of 
unstinted and unmeasured praise. His glorification 
is the fad of the hour. He is the sweet-souled, gentle- 
spirited, pure-hearted, lovable Christian. He is the 
noble and gallant deliverer of suffering Cuba from 
the intolerable tyranny of Spain. He is the grandest 
and most glorious exponent and representative of Ag- 
gressive Americanism. He is the man of destiny, the 
armed and armored and militant champion of that 
American expansion which is yet to render American 
authority supreme over every square inch of the 
earth's surface, and which is yet to demand and exact 
unquestioning obedience and unfaltering allegiance 
from every member of the human species. He is the 
man of God, raised up by an all-wise and beneficent 
Providence for the holy purpose of showering price- 
less blessings upon the inhabitants of the earth 
throughout all generations. Yes, we hear this. 

A rebellion against the authority of Spain had been 
in progress for some time in the island of Cuba. Ac- 
cording to the usage and practise of all rulers and 



ioo Iniquity in High Places 

governments and nations it is entirely proper to sup- 
press rebellions by force of arms. In fact it would 
seem that the right to suppress rebellion is the natural 
sequence and accompaniment of the so-called right of 
conquest. If by virtue of its superior military power 
one nation has the right to conquer and trample down 
and subjugate and enslave another nation, then it 
would seem that by virtue of this same superior mili- 
tary power it clearly has the right to hold that con- 
quered nation in a condition of perpetual bondage. 
It will be observed that just at this point and just at 
this time we do not affirm or deny the right or justice 
or wisdom or policy of suppressing rebellions by force 
of arms. We simply note the fact that according to 
the universal, eternal practise of all mankind such 
a procedure is an unquestioned, unquestionable, in- 
dispensable function of every form of human gov- 
ernment. If to-morrow Finland or Poland or Cir- 
cassia or Turkestan were to rise in rebellion against 
Russia the Russian government would immediately 
proceed to trample down the insurgents with mer- 
ciless severity and bloodshed, and the Russian peo- 
ple, degraded slaves though they are, would sus- 
tain the action of their government with unanimity 
and enthusiasm. If to-morrow Algeria or Sene- 
gambia or Madagascar or Tonkin were to declare 
their independence of France, the French government 
would promptly send forth its armies and navies and 
open up a horrid carnival of wholesale slaughter, to 
the intense delight of everv member of the Gallic race. 



Iniquity in High Places 101 

If to-morrow India or Egypt or Cape Colony were to 
deny and defy the authority of England, the heavens 
would again echo the sound of John Bull's wearied 
guns, and his people would again abandon their in- 
dustrial pursuits in order to vindicate and reassert 
the ancient and hereditary prowess of the Anglo- 
Saxon upon the battlefield. And the position which 
the United States would assume in a crisis of this 
character is by no means a matter of guesswork. The 
mighty struggle lasting four years to suppress the 
Southern Rebellion of 1861 shows that America is in 
line with all other nations in her readiness to cause 
any amount of woe and misery and destruction and 
death in order to maintain her authority over all her 
territorial domains. In accordance, then, with the cus- 
tom of the world, Spain had a right to suppress the 
Cuban insurgents by force of arms. The most malig- 
nant and mendacious of the American Satanic news- 
papers could not deny this right. The most malignant 
and mendacious of the infamous American dema- 
gogues who vilified Spain in order to make capital for 
their own political advancement could not deny her 
right to suppress the rebellion in Cuba. 

Bearing on this point we insert a communication 
written by Stephen B. Elkins, United States Senator 
from West Virginia, and published over his signature 
in the New York World on March 16, 1898, about a 
month before the war was commenced. Mr. Elkins 
says : 

"The American people should treat Spain in the 



102 Iniquity in High Places 

" present state of affairs just as they would treat any 
" other nation. Conscious of her strength and desiring 
" to be just, the United States cannot afford to be 
" other than fair in her conduct toward Spain. She' 
" has no difficulty with Spain, and seeks none. 

"Up to this moment the United States has no cause 
" for war with Spain. Spain is simply trying to hold 
" what belongs to her and what has been hers for the 
" past century or more, just as any other nation would 
" do, and just as the United States did in the Civil War. 
" The United States did all it could then to prevent 
" the independence of the Southern States. 

"Cuba has fought for three years for independence. 
" The South, with more claims for independence, with 
" a capital, a Congress, postal facilities and the like, 
" possessed of one-third of the area of the republic, 
" with an army equal to any that the world has ever 
" seen, fought four years, and the United States stead- 
" ily resented and resisted any idea of intervention or 
" recognition. It seems to me the United States laid 
" down a doctrine of nonintervention in our civil war 
" from which she cannot easily and with consistency 
" depart. 

"If Cuba can drive Spain from the island she will 
" secure her independence. Before the United States 
" secured her independence the armies of England on 
" United States soil surrendered. The United States 
" has no more to do with the war between Cuba and 
" Spain than any nation on earth. When it becomes 
" just and right for the United' States to recognize 



Iniquity in High Places 103 

" the independence of Cuba it will be just and right 
" for the other nations to do the same thing, especially 
" the governments on this continent. I don't think the 
" United States is called upon any more than Mexico 
" or South America to take action now in Cuban mat- 
" ters. 

"Friends of Cuba in the United States are doing 
" most of the fighting for Cuba. They are the cause 
" of most of the war feeling that now prevails in the 
" United States. They are willing, in order to secure 
" Cuban independence, that the United States should 
" go to war with Spain. I think more of the United 
" States and her people and interests than I do of the 
" Cuban cause or Cuban independence, and I am not 
" willing to go to war simply to secure Cuban inde- 
" pendence." 

It would seem that a spirit of comity should restrain 
or prevent one nation from interfering in the affairs 
of another nation at a juncture when all the energies 
of the second nation are absorbed in a desperate strug- 
gle to suppress a formidable rebellion. Noninterfer- 
ence and nonintervention would seem to be the proper 
rule of action in a case of this character. It is true 
that this rule has not been observed by the nations of 
this world, for the reason that the world in all times, 
in all ages, has been nothing more or less than a thea- 
ter for the exhibition of the most odious criminality in 
all its shifting forms and types and variations. All 
history shows that nothing is more common than that 
a nation convulsed and paralyzed by internal strife 



104 Iniquity in High Places 

should become a target for attack by the wicked rulers 
of surrounding powers who hope to effect an easy 
conquest. For a brief period at one point in the ex- 
perience of the nation there was a prospect that these 
United States might become the target and victim of 
such an attack. In November, 1861, when the heart 
and soul and life and strength of the American people 
were all centered in their stupendous efforts to crush 
the Southern rebellion, an English merchant steamer, 
the Trent, carrying the English mails from Vera Cruz 
in Mexico, and Havana in Cuba to the island of St. 
Thomas for transshipment to Europe, was stopped 
near the Bahama Islands by an American war-vessel. 
The Americans boarded the Trent, and seized and 
carried off two of her passengers, Mason and Slidell, 
who were very prominent men among the Southern 
rebels, and who were now on their way to Europe to 
endeavor to secure assistance for their cause. Mason 
and Slidell were taken as prisoners to the United 
States, while the Trent proceeded on her voyage. 
When the news of this affair reached England there 
was a great outburst of excitement and indignation. 
War meetings were held in all parts of the country, 
and a cry arose for vengeance upon the United States. 
There was at that time no telegraph cable across the 
ocean, by means of which the American government 
could immediately transmit explanations. Mail steam- 
ers were not as numerous at that time as they are at 
the present day, and there were longer intervals be- 
tween the departures of vessels from New York for 



Iniquity in High Places 105 

Europe. This circumstance gave more time for the 
rapid development of the war spirit in England. But 
the instant the arrival of Mason and Slidell as prison- 
ers was announced the American Secretary of State, 
William H. Seward, hastened to write to Charles 
Francis Adams, the American Minister to England, 
directing him to inform the British government that 
the whole affair would be settled in accordance with 
the principles of international law. 

Nothing could have been more reasonable than this, 
and nothing ought to have been more satisfactory than 
this. If this communication had been laid before the 
English people it could hardly have failed to have a 
most beneficial effect in checking or allaying the 
growth and spread of the war spirit. But Lord Pal- 
merston, the head of the British government, put this 
message in his pocket, concealed its contents from 
the British public, and traveled around the country, 
making violent speeches at war meetings. He did 
not want a peaceful settlement of the matter. He 
wanted war. and he wanted an excuse for war. He 
wanted to send men and money and arms to the as- 
sistance of the Southern rebels. He wanted to open 
a firing line the whole length of the Canadian border. 
He wanted to fill American bays and harbors with 
British war steamers. He wanted to blockade and 
bottle up the Northern ports and to open the ports of 
the South to the trade of the world. He wanted 
thereby to obtain a supply of cotton in order that the 
idle cotton mills of England miarht resume the maim- 



106 Iniquity in High Places 

facture of goods, and that the million starving cotton 
operatives in Lancashire might obtain work and food. 
But in the estimation of the British government far 
more weighty than these pressing commercial consid- 
erations was the question of world-domination in the 
future. If the United States could be broken up into 
two rival and hostile republics, these republics would 
neutralize each other's influence in the affairs of the 
world, and British supremacy would thus remain un- 
challenged for an indefinite period of time. In the 
presence of the United States in these latter days John 
Bull is an exceedingly gentle and tractable animal. 
In the presence of the American republic as a united 
and harmonious whole John Bull stands with bared 
head and bowed form, a perfect pattern of perfect ob- 
sequiousness. But the case was different in 1861. 
America's extremity was Britain's opportunity. 
America was in dire straits. The great republic was 
apparently in the throes of dissolution, and John Bull 
wanted to jump in and administer the death-blow. 
The British government wanted to goad and bully 
and browbeat and threaten and insult the United States 
till the American people would become so indignant 
that they would refuse to give up Mason and Slidell, 
regardless of all questions as to the legality of their 
arrest and detention. But there was no legal investi- 
gation of the matter. England peremptorily demand- 
ed the instant release of the prisoners. They were 
handed over to a British agent on a British ultimatum. 
It was a case of give up the prisoners or fight. This 



Iniquity in High Places 107 

attempt of the British government to drive the United 
States into war at a time when the American people 
were engaged in a life and death struggle for the 
preservation of their national existence was an act of 
consummate meanness, of consummate perfidy, of 
consummate treachery, of consummate cowardice. In 
like manner in 1898 when the Spanish nation was ex- 
hausted and prostrated and utterly broken-down in a 
perfectly lawful attempt to suppress a rebellion, the 
attack made upon that nation by the United States 
was an act of consummate meanness, of consummate 
perfidy, of consummate treachery, of consummate 
cowardice. 

But it is said that while it may have been entirely 
lawful and proper for Spain to attempt to suppress 
the rebellion in Cuba, the conduct of the war was 
characterized by horrid brutalities that shocked the 
whole civilized world and rendered it necessary for 
the United States to intervene in the interest of uni- 
versal humanity. It is said that large portions of the 
island of Cuba were laid waste ; that the inhabitants 
were driven from their homes and compelled to gather 
around cities and towns where they perished from 
starvation by tens of thousands and hundreds of thou- 
sands. Right here we beg leave to say that the laying 
waste of a country is a perfectly legitimate war meas- 
ure. It must certainly be regarded as a most severe 
and drastic policy which should never be resorted to, 
except under stress of circumstances. If anything so 
brutal, so beastly, so wicked, so horrible, so fiendish 



108 Iniquity in High Places 

as war can be governed by rules of propriety and de- 
cency, we should affirm it to be the duty of all com- 
manders of all armies to endeavor to attain the ob- 
jects for which wars are inaugurated with the least 
possible destruction of life and property. But it must 
be acknowledged that the greatest possible destruction 
of life and property may be effected in order to 
achieve success, and when victory is within reach 
there is no limit to the amount of human slaughter 
that may be committed for the purpose of securing 
such victory. 

In reference to the laying waste of a country as a 
war measure, we call attention to the following orders 
issued by Gen. Grant to Gen. Sheridan in 1864 : 

Headquarters in the Field, 

Monocacy Bridge, Md., 

Aug. 5, 1864. 
General : In pushing up the Shenandoah Valley, as 
it is expected you will have to go first or last, it is 
desirable that nothing should be left to invite the 
enemy to return. Take all provisions, forage, and 
stock wanted for the use of your command. Such as 
cannot be consumed, destroy. 

U. S. Grant, 
Lieut. -General. 



Iniquity in High Places 109 

City Point, Va., 
Aug. 16, 1861. 
Major-General Sheridan, 
Winchester, Va. : 
If you can possibly spare a division of cavalry, send 
them through Loudoun County to destroy and carry 
off the crops, animals, negroes, and all men under 
fifty years of age. 

U. S. Grant, 
Lieut. -General. 



Headquarters Army of the United States, 

City Point, Va., 
Aug. 26, 1864. 
Major-General Sheridan, 
Hilltown, Va. : 
Give the enemy no rest, and if it is possible to fol- 
low to the Virginia Central road, follow that far. Do 
all the damage to railroads and crops you can. Carry 
off stock of all descriptions and negroes, so as to pre- 
vent further planting. If the war is to last another 
year we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a bar- 
ren waste. 

U. S. Grant, 
Lieutenant-General. 



These orders speak for themselves. They explain 
themselves. The wayfaring man though a fool can- 
not fail to understand them. Directions are here given 
to kill all horses, all cattle, all sheep, all pigs, all 



i io Iniquity in High Places 

poultry. Directions are given to destroy all hay, all 
grain, all crops. Nay, under these orders the woman's 
loaf of bread might be taken from the oven and the 
flitch of bacon from the garret and thrown into the 
nearest bonfire. And then when the farmer has been 
seized and carried off and thrown into a military 
prison, when this process has been repeated on every 
farm and at every house, when the women and 
children are thus left to shift for themselves in a 
ruined country, in what Gen. Grant calls a "barren 
waste," we can easily understand that the floodgates 
of hell have been thrown wide open and the land has 
been deluged with an unfathomable tide of misery and 
woe. 

But these war measures were prefectly legitimate, 
for the reason that they were absolutely necessary. 
More than twenty years afterwards, in writing his 
"Personal Memoirs" Gen. Sheridan spoke of these 
orders which he received from Gen. Grant in the fol- 
lowing language : 

"I endorse Grant's programme in all its parts, for 
" the stores of meat and grain that the Shenandoah 
" Valley provided, and the men it furnished for Lee's 
" depleted regiments, were the strongest auxiliaries he 
" possessed in the whole insurgent section. In war 
" a territory like this is a factor of great importance, 
" and whichever adversary controls it permanently 
" reaps all the advantages of its prosperity. Hence, as 
" I have said, I endorsed Grant's programme, for I do 
" not hold war to mean simply that lines of men shall 



Iniquity in High Places in 

" engage each other in battle, and material interests 
" be ignored. This is but a duel in which one com- 
" batant seeks another's life ; war means much more, 
" and is far worse than this. Those who rest at home 
" in peace and plenty see but little of the horrors at- 
" tending such a duel, and even grow indifferent to 
" them as the struggle goes on, contenting themselves 
" with encouraging all who are able-bodied to enlist 
'• in the cause, to fill up the shattered ranks as death 
" thins them. It is another matter, however, when 
" deprivation and suffering are brought to their own 
" doors. Then the case appears much graver, for the 
" loss of property weighs heavy with the most of man- 
" kind; heavier often than the sacrifices made on the 
'• field of battle. Death is popularly considered the 
" maximum punishment in war, but it is not ; reduction 
" to poverty brings prayers for peace more surely and 
" more quickly than does the destruction of human 
" life, as the selfishness of man has demonstrated in 
" more than one great conflict." 

The great and rich Shenandoah Valley was cer- 
tainly a storehouse from which the rebel forces at 
Richmond drew supplies. The men whom Gen. Grant 
ordered seized and thrown into prison were rebel sym- 
pathizers who would have enlisted in the rebel army, 
or who would have engaged in raising crops to 
feed that army. The valley was a great thoroughfare, 
down which the rebel hosts swept northeastward into 
Maryland and Pennsylvania. As a war measure, there- 
fore, Gen. Grant was entirely justified in directing that 



ii2 Iniquity in High Places 

that region of country be rendered uninhabitable and 
uninhabited. The devastation of a country which fur- 
nishes provisions for the enemy is as sound and proper 
and permissible in policy as it is to burn a wagon-train 
or a vessel laden with provisions for the enemy. It 
will also be observed that Abraham Lincoln was then 
President of the United States, and at that critical 
period of the war must have been in constant com- 
munication with Gen. Grant. He must have been cog- 
nizant of all Gen. Grant's plans and schemes and 
orders, and such plans and orders could not have 
gone into effect except, at least, with Lincoln's tacit 
assent and approval. Lincoln, then, was equally re- 
sponsible with Grant for the directions given to Sheri- 
dan to lay waste the Shenandoah Valley. And if the 
American government was justified in laying waste 
the soil of Virginia as a war measure then the Spanish 
government was justified in laying waste the soil of 
Cuba as a war measure. And if the American Satanic 
Press and the American Pulpit and the American 
Forum in pouring forth a ceaseless torrent of denun- 
ciation and abuse upon the heads of all Spain and all 
Spaniards were simply performing a plain duty, then 
in the discharge of a similar duty they are bound 
even at this late day to execrate and curse and revile 
the memory of Lincoln and Grant and Sheridan. 
Either retract your vilification of the Spanish, or else 
heap unmeasured condemnation upon the heads of 
those Americans who in the management of the war 



Iniquity in High Places 113 

in Virginia adopted a line of policy identical in every 
respect with the policy of the Spanish in Cuba. 

But we desire to call attention to the atrocities per- 
petrated in the Philippine Islands since the period 
when the American people abandoned their traditional 
policy of peace and harmony and love and good-will 
to man, and embarked in a career of destruction and 
death as a bloodthirsty, piratical robber nation. In 
the New York World of July 26, 1900, appear the fol- 
lowing statements : 

"While no proclamation has yet been issued declar- 
• ing the Filipinos in arms to be outlaws, the Amer- 
' ican troops are practising in spots in the Philippines 
' a policy beside which bandit law is a tame affair. In 
' spite of the peace proclamations our soldiers here 
' and there resort to horrible measures with the na- 
' tives. Captains and lieutenants are sometimes 
' judges, sheriffs and executioners. If half a dozen 
' natives, more or less, are shot on suspicion of being 
' our enemies, no news of it reaches the Military Gov- 
' ernor, who wants none. 

" 'I don't want any more prisoners sent into Manila,' 
' was a verbal order from the Governor-General three 
' months ago. That is the message passed along from 
' officers to privates, and it has been interpreted in sev- 
' eral ways. Without any direct authority from 
' Washington, without any published orders calling 
' for such conduct, it is now the custom to avenge the 
' death of an American soldier bv burning to the 



ii4 Iniquity in High Places 

" ground all the houses and killing right and left the 
" natives who are only 'suspects.' 

"When Lieutenant Kiefer was ambushed and killed 
" and we sought in vain for the insurrectos who were 
" responsible for his death, the company rounded up a 
" number of unruly male inhabitants and shot them 
" without trial. The official report stated nothing of 
" this. It said, as the official reports always do when 
" telling of such an instance, that the enemy had been 
" routed with great slaughter. 

"Colonel Howe ingenuously wondered why the na- 
" tives did not return to their homes in Albay and 
" Legashi. For three weeks his pickets shot at every 
" living thing that came in range, whether or not it 
" carried arms. To compel information as to where 
" they have secreted their arms, the natives are often 
" strung up by their thumbs, or nooses are put around 
" their necks and they are partly strangled. 

"Since most of the Americans who were held prison- 
" ers have been released, the campaign has become 
" one of no quarter on both sides. Some of the locali- 
" ties where the people are most bitterly opposed to us 
" are scenes of devastation." 



Manila, July 26, 1900.— At Oroquieta, in Northern 
Mindanao, two American soldiers entered a native 
store for the purpose of buying food. While there, one 
of them was killed by a bolo and his head severed 
from his body. The other escaped and gave the 
alarm. A company of the Fortieth Infantry stationed 



Iniquity in High Places 115 

at Cagayan repaired to Oroquieta and killed eighty- 
nine natives, thirty-eight of them being in a single 
house. 



New York, Oct. 25, 1901.— A cable from Manila to 
the Sun says : Numerous suspected municipal officials 
have been arrested in Samar. The evidence shows 
that there have been startling conspiracies on foot. 
The sources of the chief supplies for the rebels have 
been blockaded and the inhabitants are now required 
to concentrate in the towns. The people outside of 
these camps will be regarded as enemies of the Amer- 
icans. 



Manila, Oct. 25, 1901.— The people of the Island 
of Samar have been notified to concentrate in the 
towns on pain of being considered public enemies and 
outlaws and treated accordingly. 



Manila, Oct. 27, 1901. — Dispatches from Catbolgan, 
Samar, say that stringent and energetic measures are 
being taken to suppress the insurrection in that island. 
Gen. Smith has notified all the presidentes and head 
men of the pueblos that they must surrender all arms 
and turn over the persons implicated in the Balangiga 
massacre before November 6th, threatening that other- 
wise the presidentes will be sent to the island of Guam, 
the villages destroyed and the property confiscated. 
Marines under Major Littleton W. T. Waller have 
been stationed at Balangiga and Basey, and ten gun- 



1 1 6 Iniquity in High Places 

boats are vigilantly patrolling the Samar coast. Most 
of the towns in the southern part of the island have 
been destroyed. 



New York, Oct. 27, 1901.— A cable to the Sun from 
Manila says : Troops are not able to find insurgents 
in Samar, except individually ; hence they are chiefly 
employed in preventing communication and destroy- 
ing crops. 



Manila, Dec. 16, 1901. — General Franklin Bell has 
been exceedingly active in Batangas province, where 
he intends by every means available to stamp out the 
insurgents. Gen. Bell has notified the natives in Ba- 
tangas that on December 28th he purposes to concen- 
trate them in the neighborhood of the towns. After 
that date everything outside these limits will be con- 
fiscated. 



Manila, April 9, 1902.— Major Littleton W. T. Wal- 
ler, at to-day's session of the court-martial by which 
he is being tried, testified in rebuttal of the evidence 
given yesterday by Gen. Jacob H. Smith who com- 
manded the American troops in the island of Samar. 
Major Waller said that Gen. Smith instructed him 
to kill and burn, and told him that the more he killed 
and burned the better pleased he would be ; that it was 
no time to take prisoners, and that he was to make 
Samar a howling wilderness. Major Waller asked 



Iniquity in High Places 117 

Gen. Smith to define the age limit for killing, and he 
replied: "Everything over ten." 



Manila, April 11, 1902.— Major Littleton W. T. 
Waller of the Marine Corps, who is being tried by 
court-martial on the charge of executing Samar na- 
tives without trial, addressed the court to-day. The 
major said that in 1882 he was with the British forces 
in Egypt, where Arabs captured pickets of the British 
Bengal cavalry, decapitated the prisoners and placed 
their heads on poles. Major Waller said that all the 
Arabs that were caught by the British were shot with- 
out trial. 

During the campaign in China in 1900 the Chinese 
mutilated the dead and tortured the wounded to death. 
Consequently when a Chinese Boxer or a fanatic was 
captured he was executed immediately without refer- 
ence. This was true in the case of the troops of every 
nation in China. It was true during the three weeks 
he ( Major Waller) commanded troops there, but the 
same thing occurred there when he was no longer in 
command. No protest was made, and he had every 
right to believe that his acts were approved, so far as 
the American forces were concerned. He knew they 
were approved, by those of other nations. 

Major Waller said that it was impossible to conceive 
such treachery as that of the natives of Samar. They 
revel in blood and have an appetite for wanton sacri- 
lege of the human body. These fiends stole Captain 
Cornell's class ring, filled the soldiers' bodies with jam 



1 1 8 Iniquity in High Places 

and jelly and attempted to murder my command. I 
shot them. I honestly thought then that I was right, 
and I believe so now. Neither my people .nor the 
v orld will believe me to be a murderer. 

Captain Arthur T. Marix, Marine Corps, represent- 
ing Major Waller, in a forceful argument maintained 
that Waller's actions were justified by martial laws, 
quoting numerous authorities on the subject. He 
claimed that all the testimony went to show that the 
Major was justified. At the conclusion of the argu- 
ments for the defense the general feeling was that the. 
result of the trial would be the acquittal of Major 
Waller. 



Manila, April 25, 1902. — The trial by court-martial 
of Gen. Jacob H. Smith on the charge of conduct 
prejudicial to good order and discipline, began to-day. 
General Lloyd Wheaton presided. Colonel Charles A. 
Woodruff, counsel for the defense, said he desired to 
simplify the proceedings. He was willing to admit 
that General Smith gave instructions to Major Waller 
to kill and burn, and make Samar a howling wilder- 
ness, that he wanted everybody killed who was capable 
of bearing arms, and that he did specify all over ten 
years, as the Samar boys of that age were equally as 
dangerous as their elders. 



Tour of General Miles. 
In 1902 General Xelson A. Miles, the head of the 
army of the United States, made a tour of inspection 



Iniquity in High Places 119 

in the Philippine Islands. The result of his observa- 
tion was embodied in a report filed with the Secretary 
of War at Washington on Feb. 17, 1903. 

Gen. Miles says that in going from Calamba to Ba- 
tangas in November, 1902, he noticed that the coun- 
try appeared devastated and that the people were very 
much depressed. Stopping at Lipa, a party of citizens, 
headed by the acting presidente, met him and stated 
that they desired to make complaint of harsh treat- 
ment of the people of that community, saying that 
they had been concentrated in towns and had suffered 
great indignities ; that fifteen of their people had been 
tortured by what is known as the water torture, and 
that one man, a highly-respected citizen, aged 65 years, 
named Vicente Luna, while suffering from the effects 
of the torture and unconscious, was dragged into his 
house, which had been set on fire, and was burned to 
death. They stated that these atrocities were commit- 
ted by a company of scouts under command of Lieu- 
tenant Hennessey, and that their people had been 
crowded into towns, 600 being confined in one build- 
ing. A doctor of the party said he was ready to tes- 
tify that some of the 600 died from suffocation. 

At Calbayog, in the island of Samar, it was reported 
that several men in that district had been subjected to 
the water torture. Gen. Miles saw three men who 
had been subjected to this treatment. One was the 
presidente of the town, Mr. Rosales, who showed long, 
deep scars on his arms which he said were caused by 
the cords with which he was bound, cutting into the 



120 Iniquity in High Places 

flesh. The second man was named Jose Borja, and 
the third was Padre Jose Diaznes, who stated he was 
one of three priests who had been subjected to torture 
by the troops under command of Lieutenant Gaujot, 
Tenth Cavalry ; that his front teeth had been knocked 
out, which was apparent ; that he was otherwise mal- 
treated and robbed of $300. It was stated that these 
priests had been taken out to be killed, and were only 
saved by the prompt action of Major Carrington, 
First Infantry, who sent out for them. Lieutenant 
Gaujot was tried, pleaded guilty and was given the 
trivial sentence of three months' suspension from com- 
mand, forfeiting $50 per month for the same period. 
His pleading guilty prevented all the facts and circum- 
stances being developed. 

It appears that Major Glenn, Lieutenant Conger 
and a party of assistants and native scouts were 
moved from place to place for the purpose of extorting 
statements by means of torture, and it became no- 
torious that this party was called "Glenn's Brigade." 



The Water-Cure. 

Washington, April 14, 1902. — The Senate Commit- 
tee on the Philippines began the week with an inten- 
tion of making an investigation of the charges to the 
effect that the "water cure," so called, is practised on 
the insurgents, and Charles S. Reilly of Northampton, 
Mass., formerly a sergeant in Company M, Twenty- 
sixth Volunteer Infantry, was the first witness called 
with that end in view. 



Iniquity in High Places 121 

Reilly said that he had been in the Philippines from 
October 25, 1899, to March 4, 1901. In reply to ques- 
tions by Senator Rawlins, he said he had witnessed 
the "water cure*' at Igbaris, in the province of Iloilo, 
on October 8, 19C0. It was administered to the pres- 
idente or chief Filipino official of the town. He said 
that upon the arrival of his command at Igbaris the 
presidente was asked if runners had been sent out no- 
tifying insurgents of their presence, and upon his re- 
fusal to give the information, he was taken to the con- 
vent, where the witness was stationed, and the water- 
cure was administered to him. 

This official was, he said, a man about 40 years of 
age. When he (the witness) first saw him he was 
standing in the corridor of the convent, stripped to 
the waist and his hands tied behind him, with Captain 
Glenn and Lieutenant Conger of the regular army and 
Dr. Lyons, a contract surgeon, standing near, while 
many soldiers stood about. The man, he said, was 
then thrown under a water tank, which held about one 
hundred gallons of water, and his mouth placed di- 
rectly under the faucet and held open so as to com- 
pel him to swallow the water, which was allowed to 
escape from the tank. 

Over him stood an interpreter, repeating one word, 
which the witness said he did not understand, but 
which he believed to be the native equivalent of "con- 
fess." When at last the presidente agreed to tell what 
he knew he was released and allowed to start away. 
He was not, however, permitted to escape, and upon 



122 Iniquity in High Places 

refusing to give further information, he was again 
taken as he was about to mount his horse and the 
cure administered for the second time. 

This time the man was not stripped nor was he 
taken into the building. Dr. Lyons said the water 
could be brought to the spot and given there, and 
when it was brought in a five-gallon can, one end of a 
syringe was placed in it and the other end in the 
man's mouth. As he still refused, a second syringe 
was brought and one end of it placed in the prostrate 
man's nose. He still refused, and a handful of salt 
was thrown into the water. This had the desired ef- 
fect and the presidente agreed to answer all questions. 

On cross-examination by Republican Senators, 
Reilly said the "cure" had been first resorted to in 
order to compel the presidente to reveal his own atti- 
tude, and that it had been learned from his confession 
that while he professed to be friendly to the United 
States, he was in reality a captain of the insurgent 
forces and that his police were all soldiers. As a con- 
sequence of this exposure he was arrested and the 
town burned. He said that the victim struggled 
fiercely while the cure was being administered and 
that his eyes were bloodshot, but that the next day 
when he saw the man he observed no effects of the 
"dose" he had received. 

Another witness, William L. Smith of Athol, Mass., 
who was a private in Company M, Twenty-sixth Vol- 
unteer Infantry, corroborated Reilly's testimony, say- 
ing he had also witnessed the torture of two policemen 



Iniquity in High Places 123 

of the town of Igbaris. Smith said the details of the 
"cure" were in the hands of a squad of the Sixteenth 
Regular Infantry, known as the "water-cure detail." 
He also said that he had assisted in the burning of 
the town of Igbaris, and that the natives generally 
escaped from their homes only with the clothes they 
wore. Smith expressed the opinion that Igbaris had 
a population of 10,000. So far as he knew no lives 
were lost. The witness said that the country places 
in the vicinity were also burned. All these acts were 
done under the command of Captain Glenn, who was, 
he said, Judge-Advocate of the Department of the 
Visayas. He said that the water was kept running 
for four or five minutes and that the doctor in charge 
frequently placed his hand on the man's heart as if to 
observe its effect upon that organ. 

What a black catalogue of crimes is here presented 
to our view ! The hired liars of the American news- 
papers, the expert and trained liars of the American 
newspapers, the skilled and talented liars of the Am- 
erican newspapers who day by day wrote out and 
published long columns of the foulest falsehoods in 
regard to alleged deeds of the Spanish in Cuba, did 
not and could not, even by the utmost stretch of the 
most vivid imagination, succeed in depicting a scene 
of horrors that would bear any comparison whatever 
with the confessed and acknowledged atrocities per- 
petrated by the American soldiery in the Philippine 
Islands. And vet the American Satanic Press and 



124 Iniquity in High Places 

the American Pulpit and the American Forum that 
howled in concert and chorus for the shedding of 
Spanish blood in expiation of Spanish sins, breathed 
not the faintest syllable of adverse comment on the 
fiendish deeds committed under the American flag and 
under American authority on the opposite side of the 
globe. Wherefore this agonized outcry in the one case 
and this serene silence in the other? Was it because 
in the one case that the noisy expressions of sympathy 
for "suffering Cuba" were a farce, a fraud, and a 
sham designed to pave the way for plunging the coun- 
try into a most infamous and most iniquitous war? 
On the other hand, did the placid indifference with 
which we contemplated the atrocities in the Philip- 
pine Islands arise from the fact that it is part and 
parcel of our national belief and national faith that 
Americans hold a license from Almighty God author- 
izing them to commit any and all manner of crimes 
upon any and all other nations and races of men on 
earth ? 

Look at the incident at Oroquieta which we have 
previously noted. An American soldier was mur- 
dered in a store at that place. A body of American 
troops stationed at another locality repaired to Oro- 
quieta and killed eighty-nine natives. There was no 
pretense at investigation for the purpose of ascertain- 
ing by whom the American soldier was killed. There 
was even no pretense that the parties concerned in the 
murder of the American soldier were included among 
the natives who were slain. The troops shot down 



Iniquity in High Places 125 

everything in sight, and asked no questions. Right 
here we challenge any and all advocates and apolo- 
gists for the infamous attack made upon Spain in 
1898 by these United States to adduce a single in- 
stance in the experience of Cuba in which the Span- 
ish soldiery were guilty of any such wholesale massa- 
cre as was perpetrated at Oroquieta in the Philippine 
Islands. And yet this great crime did not evoke the 
slightest manifestation of feeling anywhere through- 
out these United States. We heard much of the hor- 
rors of the reconcentrado system established by the 
Spanish in Cuba. And yet our American generals 
adopted and enforced this same reconcentrado system 
in many portions of the Philippine Islands. They or- 
dered the natives to gather within certain limits around 
towns, and notified them that all property outside of 
these limits would be confiscated and that all persons 
found outside of these limits would be regarded as 
outlaws and public enemies — which simply means that 
they were to be shot on sight. Look at the wholesale 
burning of Filipino towns. Look at the destruction 
of Filipino crops. With this damning record staring 
him in the face, let no American be so shameless as 
to utter another syllable in condemnation of Spanish 
rule in Cuba. To every one who does not forever 
hold his peace on this subject comes home the admo- 
nition of Scripture-: 

"Thou hypocrite, first pluck the beam out of thine 
own eye, then shalt thou see clearly to remove the 
mote that is in thy brother's eye." 



126 Iniquity in High Places 

But before passing this point in our discussion, we 
beg leave to say that unduly harsh judgment should 
not be rendered against the soldiery. It is undoubt- 
edly true that the world's professional soldiery is the 
most brutal element in the world's population. The 
very vocation of the professional soldier, the vocation 
of slaughtering human beings, is necessarily brutaliz- 
ing and beastly in the highest degree. It is said to 
have been a maxim of Napoleon that if a soldier is 
not already a depraved being he should be made such 
as soon as possible. And it requires but short expe- 
rience in professional soldiers' life to plant the feet of 
the novice on the road to ruin. Wherever a body of 
professional soldiers is permanently located a moral 
plague-spot speedily appears. 

But in guerilla warfare soldiers are subject to great 
provocations. When a nation is conquered and held 
in subjection by troops from a foreign country, there 
will be more or less of friction and irritation and 
mutual hatred between the people and the soldiers. 
This hatred is liable to break out in deeds of violence. 
A number of soldiers, perhaps unarmed, in passing 
along a road are fired upon from a thicket and several 
of them are killed or wounded. An immediate and 
thorough search reveals no trace of their assailants. 
The only persons to be found are farmers who are 
apparently engaged in their usual avocations and who 
stoutly aver that they have seen nothing and know 
nothing of any armed men in that vicinity. Another 
attack of the same character occurs, and all investiga- 



Iniquity in High Places 127 

tion again proves fruitless. These scenes are repeated. 
The soldiers find the dead bodies of their comrades in 
a horrible state of mutilation. They become infuriated 
and kill and burn in all directions. But the primary 
responsibility for such horrid deeds rests not upon 
the soldiers, but upon the wicked men who sent the 
soldiers abroad upon their errand of death. In all 
ages and in all lands the professional soldiers are poor 
fools, and poor and miserable tools in the hands of 
scheming, intriguing, unscrupulous, villainous rulers, 
who inaugurate wars for the purpose of securing their 
own personal aggrandizement and personal power. 
The iniquity of rulers who send troops abroad to mur- 
der the innocent people of a foreign nation in order 
to make political capital for themselves at home, passes 
description. This stout and stiff old Anglo-Saxon 
speech of ours writhes and bends and utterly breaks 
down in any attempt to paint their wickedness. In 
comparison with such fiends, such Christian fiends, 
filled of course with the spirit of Jesus, filled of course 
with Christian life and Christian light and Christian 
love and Christian holiness — in comparison with such 
fiends the average Apache Indian with his girdle of 
human scalps about his waist becomes a white-robed 
seraph pluming his wings for flight to realms of su- 
pernal glory and eternal bliss. And yet in the year 
1898 at Washington, in these United States, just such 
fiends made that piratical attack upon Spain as a win- 
ning political card, as a means of enhancing their own 



128 Iniquity in High Places 

political prestige and political renown and political 
power. 

Bearing on this point we quote the words of Hon. 
George F. Hoar, late United States Senator from 
Massachusetts : 

"The blood of the slaughtered Filipinos, the blood 
" and wasted health and life of our own soldiers, is 
" upon the heads of those who have undertaken to 
" buy a people in the market like sheep or to treat 
" them as a lawful prize and booty of war, to impose 
" a government on them without their consent and 
" to trample under foot not only the people of the 
" Philippine Islands, but the principles upon which 
" the American Republic itself rests. The law of 
" righteousness and justice on which the great and 
" free American people should act, and in the end, I 
" am sure, will act, depends not upon parallels of 
" latitude and meridians of longitude or points of the 
" compass. It is the same always. It is as true now 
" as when our fathers declared it in 1776. It is as 
" binding upon William McKinley to-day as it was 
" upon George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. 
" The only powers of government the American 
" people can recognize are just powers, and those 
" powers rest upon the consent of the governed." 

In addressing the United States Senate Mr. Hoar 
said: 

"When you determined to resort to force to con- 
" quer the Filipinos, you took upon yourselves every 
" natural consequence of such action. The natural 



Iniquity in High Places 129 

'• result of a conflict of arms between a people com- 
" ing out of oppression and a highly civilized peo- 
•• pie— one weak and the other strong, with all the 
" powers and resources of civilization — is inevitably, 
" as everybody knows, that there will be cruelty on 
" one side and retaliation by cruelty on the other. 
" You knew it even before it happened, as well as 
" you know it now that it has happened ; and the re- 
" sponsibility is yours. 

"If, in a conflict between a people fighting for in- 
" dependence and liberty, being a weak people, and a 
" people striving to deprive them of their independ- 
" ence and liberty, being a strong people always— if 
" the nature of man remains unchanged — if the war 
" is converted in the end into a conflict in which 
" bushwhacking, treachery and cruelty have to be en- 
" countered, the responsibility is with the men who 
" made the war. Conflicts between white races and 
" brown races, or red races, or black races, between 
" superior races and inferior races, are always cruel 
" on both sides, and the men who decree with full 
" notice that such conflicts shall take place are the 
" men on whom the responsibility rests. The Senator 
" from Wisconsin declared that we would have no 
" talk with men with arms in their hands, whether 
" we were right or wrong. The responsibility for 
" everything that has happened since, which he must 
" have foreseen if he knew anything of history and 
" human nature, rests upon him and the men who act- 
" ed with him." 



130 Iniquity in High Places 

But granting that the Spanish in Cuba may have 
committed atrocities as fearful as those perpetrated 
by the Americans in the Philippines, granting even 
that the struggle in Cuba was attended by unex- 
ampled and unparalleled horrors, nevertheless this cir- 
cumstance does not afford the slightest shadow of 
an excuse for the war upon Spain. The world can 
not for a moment tolerate the monstrous proposition 
that a nation clothed with gigantic power and pos- 
sessed of unlimited resources is thereby authorized to 
dictate to any weaker nation in regard to the manage- 
ment of its internal affairs, and is further authorized 
to subjugate and trample down and murder the peo- 
ple of that weaker nation in case of neglect or re- 
fusal to comply with its demands. To accept such a 
principle is to indorse and approve and commend the 
horrid deeds of every one of the bloody conquerors 
who for thousands of years have incessantly ravaged 
the face of the earth with fire and sword, who have 
whitened the hillsides of the world with human bones, 
have reddened the rivers of the world with human 
gore and have filled the atmosphere of the heavens 
with the smoke of burning cities and the dying 
shrieks of millions of helpless and hopeless victims. 
Establish such a principle, such a theory, such a 
rule, and every one of the powerful robber nations of 
the earth will be at liberty to trump up false charges 
in regard to the internal affairs of any weaker neigh- 
bor, and may at once proceed to let loose the dogs of 
war. 



Iniquity in High Places 131 

We have previously discussed the duties of nations 
in their dealings with each other. We have previous- 
ly maintained that nations in their dealings with each 
other .should be governed by the same moral principles 
as are recognized as binding upon individuals in their 
private life. We defy any one to dispute the correct- 
ness of our position. A wise and beneficent and right- 
eous individual in private life will be gentle and kind- 
ly and courteous and considerate and respectful in all 
his dealings with his fellow men. A wise and benefi- 
cent and righteous ruler of a nation will be gentle and 
kindly and courteous and considerate and respectful in 
all his dealings, even with the feeblest of nations. A 
wise and beneficent and righteous individual would 
no more think of wickedly and wantonly murdering 
an innocent neighbor than he would think of wick- 
edly and wantonly murdering his own innocent child. 
A wise and beneficent and righteous ruler would no 
more think of murdering an innocent person of an- 
other nation than he would think of murdering his 
own innocent child. A wise and beneficent and right- 
eous individual would not rob a weaker neighbor of 
his purse, would not rob a weaker neighbor of his 
goods, would not rob a weaker neighbor of his house 
and lands, even though he could do so with perfect 
impunity. A wise and beneficent and righteous ruler 
would not rob a weaker nation of its possessions after 
the manner in which the infamous demagogues at 
Washington in 1898 robbed Spain of her possessions, 



132 Iniquity in High Places 

simply because they knew she was too weak to offer 
effectual resistance. 

But granting again that Cuba was a scene of untold 
horrors and misery, there must have been some proper 
mode of procedure whereby the people of the earth 
could labor for the alleviation of that misery. And 
that mode of procedure consisted in the exercise of a 
powerful moral influence. It is moral influence, 
healthy, wholesome moral influence, all-pervading 
and all-potent moral influence, and not the eleven- 
inch shell, that is to be relied upon for the regenera- 
tion of the world. If a friend or acquaintance of 
yours followed a mode of life or engaged in a line of 
business or indulged in personal habits that promised 
to prove destructive to his health and happiness and 
prosperity, and to the happiness and prosperity of his 
family, you would deem it your duty to remonstrate 
and plead with the man, to endeavor to convince him 
of the error of his ways, to endeavor to induce him 
to change his course. If you were to kill the man, 
and kill his wife and children, and burn his house, 
and seize upon and convert to your own use all his 
available possessions, you would not, unless you were 
an American politician or an American clergyman of 
exceedingly high degree and high renown, have the 
impudence to claim that you had thereby assisted in 
introducing the era of universal peace on earth and 
universal good-will to men. And if one man has no 
moral right to kill an individual in order to "reform" 



Iniquity in High Places 133 

him, then a million men have no moral right to kill an 
individual in order to "reform" him. 

The true course for the United States to pursue in 
regard to Cuban affairs was to present to Spain a note 
reading about in this wise : 

The United States recognizes the fact that the gov- 
ernment of Spain in the exercise of its legitimate func- 
tions is entitled to make use of all necessary armed 
force for the suppression of any rebellion against its 
authority in any portion of its territorial domains. It 
is to be noted, however, that in this modern age and 
at this present day the universal sentiment of the civil- 
ized world is strongly in favor of circumscribing and 
limiting the horrors and miseries that are necessarily 
atendant upon all active warfare. The sentiment of 
the world is strongly in favor of affording protection 
to the lives, the persons, the property and homes of 
all noncombatants. In accordance with this world- 
wide sentiment it is respectfully suggested that the 
government of Spain appoint a commission composed 
of competent, upright and humane individuals with 
directions to repair at once to the island of Cuba, to 
examine into the condition of all classes of people on 
that island as affected by the war, and to report there- 
upon at the earliest date. 

By order of the President. 

(Signed) John S her max. 

Secretary of State. 
Some such note as the foregoing should have been 
drawn up by order of the President, and signed by 



134 Iniquity in High Places 

himself as well as by his Secretary of State, and for- 
warded to Spain. It will be observed that there is 
nothing whatever in the wording of this proposed note 
that could possibly give offense to the proudest and 
most sensitive of nations. The note does not allege 
that distress is actually existing in Cuba. It does not 
even allege that distress is reported as existing in 
Cuba. It simply alludes to the "horrors and miseries 
that are necessarily attendant upon all active warfare," 
and thereby opens the way for the inference that Cuba 
may be suffering under the afflictions that visit and 
scourge all lands where human wickedness is reveling 
in human slaughter. A copy of this note should have 
been sent to the government of each of the civilized 
nations of the world with the request that such gov- 
ernment proceed to draw up a note of similar tenor 
and similar spirit and forward the same to the gov- 
ernment of Spain. Each of these governments should 
also have been requested to send a commission to the 
island of Cuba in order to obtain full and complete 
information in regard to the condition of things pre- 
vailing there. 

But most efficacious for throttling the horrible war 
movement of 1898 would have been the convening of 
a World's Congress on International Affairs. Most 
efficacious for throttling any and all threatened war 
movements of the future would be the establishment 
of a World's Congress as a recognized instrumentality 
for giving expression to the world's sentiments. Noth- 
ing- of the kind and character and nature of that which 



Iniquity in High Places 135 

we here propose has ever yet been known in the 
world's history. Of course there have been so-called 
world's congresses by the score. There have been 
world's congresses of the adherents of the different 
forms of religion. There have been world's congresses 
of the individuals engaged in the different departments 
of scientific investigation. There have been world's 
congresses of the persons connected with literary, in- 
dustrial and charitable associations. But we here 
speak of a World's Congress on International Affairs, 
a World's Congress that shall deal with the questions 
between nations, that shall deal with the issues that 
threaten to breed strife and contests between nations. 

The government of the United States should have 
called for the meeting of such a World's Congress for 
the consideration of Cuban affairs. The use of the 
Capitol at Washington should have been proffered 
for holding the sessions of the Congress. A liberal 
appropriation should have been made for paying the 
expenses of the delegates to the Congress. Every one 
of the so-called civilized nations of the earth should 
be requested to send to the Congress a delegation com- 
posed of half a dozen or a dozen or more of its ablest 
statesmen. Each nation should be entitled to cast one 
vote in the Congress for its nationality and one addi- 
tional vote for every million of civilized population 
it may possess and also one vote for any major frac- 
tion of a million of civilized population. The delega- 
tion from each country should vote as a unit, and 
should cast the entire vote of the nation it represents. 



136 Iniquity in High Places 

Under this plan there would have been a full, com- 
plete and genuine World's Congress, worthy of its 
name. The whole civilized world would have been 
represented. That World's Congress would have had 
a constituency of 450 millions or 500 millions of peo- 
ple. Each of the smaller nations would have exer- 
cised a power proportioned to its numerical strength. 
Holland and Belgium would have been there. Den- 
mark and Switzerland and Greece would have been 
there. Servia and Roumania and Bulgaria would have 
been there. Canada would have been there. Australia 
and New Zealand would have been there. Cape Col- 
ony would have been there. The Boer Republics of 
South Africa would have been there in 1898, for they 
had not at that time passed out of existence. The 
Spanish-American republics of Central and South 
America would have all been there. 

As a matter of course this World's Congress at the 
outset of its career would have no legal power what- 
ever ; but it would have an unprecedented moral 
power. It would at once attract the most earnest gaze 
of the entire world, and would awaken the liveliest 
expectations of its future usefulness to the human 
race. In regard to any issue between two nations, in 
regard to any threatened or pending difficulty between 
two nations that might come before this W'orld's Con- 
gress for consideration, the great majority of the mem- 
bers of the Congress would be in the position of neu- 
trals, and would therefore be entirely capable of exer- 
cising unbiased judgment and of forming and ex- 



Iniquity in High Places 137 

pressing opinions in a spirit of mutual friendship for 
the parties concerned. This assemblage of the world's 
statesmen would present an array of talent, of learn- 
ing, of wisdom, of experience, of tact, of skill that 
would give great value to all its discussions and great 
weight to all its conclusions. Seldom, indeed, would 
any nation have the hardihood to decline the recom- 
mendations of the World's Congress. And as this 
Congress by averting bloodshed between nations 
would prove to be of incalculable value to all mankind, 
its power and influence would constantly increase. 
Out of this germ therefore would finally develop a 
Federation of the World, a Government of the World, 
a Parliament of the World, a Court of the World, and 
wars would be no more. 

And we here beg leave to say that a World's Con- 
gress was the only possible means of securing a right- 
eous adjudication of Cuban affairs. There was abso- 
lutely no excuse whatever for interference by any one 
nation in the affairs of Spain in Cuba. Spain had not 
in any way, shape or manner injured any nation on 
the face of the earth. Spain had not in any manner 
encroached or trespassed or infringed upon the rights 
or interests or privileges of any nation on earth. And- 
if the Spanish government had unnecessarily inaugu- 
rated an era of unexampled horrors and suffering and 
misery in the island of Cuba, it was not a crime against 
any one nation. It was a crime against universal hu- 
manity. It was a crime against the entire human race. 
It was a crime against the whole world, and the 



138 Iniquity in High Places 

whole world should have been joined in an effort for 
relief. And a movement of the whole world in this 
matter would have been attended with such moral 
mightiness, such impressiveness, such dignity, such 
calmness and deliberation as would have insured the 
universal acceptance of its advice. 

The primary promoter of the horrible deeds of 1898 
was the American Satanic Press, the most effective of 
all conceivable instrumentalities for sapping and un- 
dermining the foundations of public and private mo- 
rality, for debauching, debasing and degrading the 
rising generation, for inaugurating and perpetuating 
an era of unblushing vice and unpunished crime. The 
Satanic Press is of recent origin. It was unknown 
in the days of our fathers. Those of us whose period 
of observation reaches back to the first half of the last 
century have witnessed the entire growth and develop- 
ment of this phenomenal monstrosity. Time was, 
when the journals of America could have laid claim 
to respectability and usefulness. Time was, when 
there were journals in America that exercised a most 
powerful and most beneficial influence in impressing 
higher ideals of life and higher ideals of duty upon 
the minds of the masses of the people. Horace Gree- 
ley's great paper, the New York Tribune, will be re- 
membered as a blessing to the country. Footing his 
way into New York city as an inexperienced youth, 
with all his earthly possessions tied up in a handker- 
chief and carried on a stick over his shoulder, this, 
man founded and built up a public journal that made 



Iniquity in High Places 139 

him ruler of a mighty moral empire. Every column 
of his paper was so stamped with his strong person- 
ality, so stamped with his vigorous mentality, so 
stamped with unmistakable evidence of his earnest- 
ness, his uprightness, his conscientiousness, his sincer- 
ity, his genuine, unfeigned love for his fellow-men, 
that from the banks of the Penobscot to the banks of 
the Missouri the people looked to him for guidance, 
and rendered him unwavering support. 

But times have changed and newspapers have 
changed. It is extremely doubtful whether any more 
Horace Greeleys will appear in the world, and it is 
absolutely certain that no more Horace Greeleys 
would be wanted or commissioned or employed in any 
capacity in any of the great newspaper establishments 
of the day. The metropolitan journal does not want 
in its employ any man who would be hampered or 
embarrassed by conscientious scruples in the execu- 
tion of any work that might be assigned him. The 
great newspaper establishment of the day is a capital- 
istic affair, backed up by millions of dollars. The 
newspaper is founded and equipped and run for the 
sole purpose of making money, just as a cotton mill 
or a woolen mill or an iron mill is built and run for 
the purpose of making money. And experience has 
fully shown that there is no limit to the amount of 
villainy to which the American Satanic Press is pre- 
pared to resort in order to make money. For the coin 
they will oppose any cause, however just and right- 
eous and beneficent that cause may be. For the coin 



140 Iniquity in High Places 

they will advocate any cause, however iniquitous or 
infamous that cause may be. For the coin they will 
undertake to ruin the business of the most honest and 
upright of men, or to ruin the reputation of the purest 
and best of women. The corrupt and villainous jour- 
nal will flaunt in the face of a wealthy victim a writ- 
ten narrative of his misdeeds in some shameful act of 
bygone years, and will threaten the publication of that 
narrative if thousands and tens of thousands in coin 
are not immediately forthcoming to purchase silence. 
To the Satanic Press it is entirely immaterial whether 
they publish truth or falsehood. If falsehood attracts 
more readers than truth, if it increases the number of 
subscribers, if it increases the circulation and thus 
paves the way for an increase of advertising patron- 
age, then falsehood is published with sensational head- 
lines and is scattered broadcast throughout the land. 
As a matter of fact, the columns of the Satanic Press 
perpetually reek with falsehood that is never recti- 
fied or retracted. 

But far worse than the role of blackmailer and 
highwayman which is played by the Satanic Press is 
the horrid work it accomplishes in the line of public 
and private moral contamination. In its every issue 
the Satanic Press is a diurnal concrete of rascality 
and nastiness. It gathers up all the scandal, all the 
iniquity, all the acts of immorality and vice and crime 
of the preceding twenty-four hours, and as regularly 
as the sun rises it serves up the nauseous, fetid, putrid 
and putrefying mass for the delectation of its readers. 



Iniquity in High Places 141 

It crawls over the threshold of every family with its 
filthy and slimy trail. It fills the sacred precincts of 
home with the foul atmosphere of the racetrack, with 
the foul atmosphere of the pool-room, with the foul 
atmosphere of the prizefight, with the foul atmos- 
phere of the gambling-den, with the foul atmosphere 
of the bawdy-house, with the foul atmosphere of the 
slums, the gutters, the dives, and the deadfalls. It 
renders all our children entirely familiar with the as- 
pect of every form of vice and crime, and pre-emi- 
nently fits them for embracing a life of vice and 
crime. The Satanic Press is doing more to debauch 
and demoralize and break down and ruin the rising 
generation than all our schools and churches and so- 
cieties and associations can possibly do to elevate and 
improve and save them. The crying need of the hour 
is the breaking of the chains which bind the people 
to the Juggernaut car of the Satanic Press. 

In a sermon to the graduating class of Stanford 
University on May 24, 1903, Rev. Heber Newton pic- 
tured in vivid colors the infamy and iniquity of the 
Satanic Press. His address was entitled, "The Pat- 
terns on the Mount." It was based on words from 
the Bible which run in this wise : "See that thou 
make thy people after the pattern which hath been 
shown thee on the mount." The object of the ad- 
dress was to impress upon the minds of the youthful 
graduates the duty of preserving through life the 
noble ideals that had been constantly kept before them 



142 Iniquity in High Places 

in their college career. We give the following ex- 
tracts : 

"For every life that exists, for every work that is 
" to be done as a calling of God, there is a pattern in 
" the heavens. For every man or woman there is an 
"ideal* of his or her life, which is none other than 
" the divine idea, none other than God's thought of 
" what he or she should do. The true success of life 
" lies in the loyal following of these heavenly patterns. 
" The real failures of life are found where these divine 
" visions are lost, and lower working models are sub- 
" stituted. 

"The college graduate who is looking forward to 
" the career of journalism is led up the mount and 
" beholds these patterns shown him by the Divine 
" Hand, the true working models of his professional 
" career. In his early enthusiasm he kindles at the 
" sight of these ideals and longs to show how a man 
" can make true to his visions and yet be successful 
" in life. He sees in the years before him the reporter 
" who will tell the truth whatever it may cost ; who 
" will make up no lies when facts are too scant to fur- 
" nish his column ; who will suppress scandal though 
" it might make an interesting tidbit for the news de- 
" partment ; who will respect the privacy of home ; 
" who will act like a gentleman always. He sees the 
" editorial writer in the years still further ahead writ- 
" ing as he honestly believes, expressing his sincere 
" convictions, insisting on making the editorial page 
" an educator that may rank with the pulpit and the 



Iniquity in High Places 143 

" college chair as among the true intellectual and 
" moral forces of the land. He forecasts the success- 
" ful manager who writes above his desk the motto, 

" 'WE PRINT ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT,' 

" and who resolutely strikes out all other items, how- 
" ever useful they might seem to be as a means of in- 
" creasing circulation. How attractive and alluring 
" the vision of this journalist that is to be! 

"And then the enthusiastic young newspaper man 
" comes down from his mount of vision into the damp, 
" chill air of the valleys, where men are crowding one 
" another in the mad scramble for success, and he 
" sees that the men who are forging ahead have their 
" eyes on other working models than those once 
" shown him on the mount. 

"He observes the reporter who becomes a sleuth- 
" hound on the track of every scandal, intent on trac- 
" ing it to its lair and dragging its beastliness out 
" from the hiding-place of darkness into the piteous 
" publicity of the light ; the fiend who gives to the 
" whole community the sad and shameful story of the 
" reprobate of the family, to conceal which has been 
" the one burning anxiety of the whole household ; 
" the wretch who, to make up a telling article, does 
" not shrink from exploring the sewers of a great city 
" and stirring up diligently its rotting nastiness and 
" its foul-smelling pruriencies, mindless of the smutch 
" and smell of his own garments, if so be that he can 
" bring, some most offensive bit of offal to the surface 
" of society as worry meat for the human hounds. 



144 Iniquity in High Places 

"He discerns the next day the editorial writer who 
" does not hesitate to sell his pen to the highest bidder 
"in the journalistic market; who writes one day on 
" behalf of the tariff and the next day on behalf of 
" free trade ; who does not hesitate to use the critical 
" columns of his paper to pay back personal grudges 
" against actors and singers, mindless of what reputa- 
" tions are ruined or what careers are blighted, so 
" that he has a brilliant and slashing article over which 
" the whole town will talk for twenty-four hours. 

"He visions in the far future the editor-in-chief who 
" sneeringly smiles at the motto of his office, 
" 'we print all the news that's unfit to print,' 
" so long as it sells editions of the paper. He sees a 
" business manager who will succeed in building up 
" a great paper, with a huge circulation and a vast ad- 
" vertising business, but a paper which beclouds all 
" ideals, stifles all enthusiasm, betrays all convictions 
" and shadows life with sin and suffering." 

In regard to the iniquity of the American Satanic 
Press we will put upon the witness-stand no less a 
personage than Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul. 
If in the history of these United States there has ever 
been a more despicable character than William Mc- 
Kinley, it is the high dignitary of the church who 
disgraced his sacred calling by playing the part of 
clerical flunkey and clerical toady to William McKin- 
ley. Throughout all of William MeKinley's career 
of wickedness, while he was engaged in the commis- 
sion of the most horrible crimes ever known on the 



Iniquity in High Places 145 

face of the earth, this man John Ireland landed and 
glorified him as the incarnation of the highest type of 
American manhood and American statesmanship and 
American patriotism. And yet from the words of 
John Ireland himself which we here give, and which 
are tantamount to a confession of his share in the 
crime, it would seem that during all that war, down 
in the deepest depths of his heart and soul and mind, 
he fully understood and appreciated the iniquity of 
the damnable deeds that were then transpiring. In an 
address delivered July 9, 1902, before the National 
Educational Association at Minneapolis, -John Ireland 
said: 

"I am one of those who see in the sequence of the 
" late Spanish-American war the guiding hand of a 
" mighty providence and the outburst of fordes long 
" gathering in the bosom of the Nation, sure, at one 
" moment or another, to break out in a resistless self- 
" assertion. Nevertheless, I shall never deny that 
" among the immediate causes of the war there are to 
" be numbered the exaggerated statements, the lies, 
" too, and the calumnies, the ceaseless appeals to wild 
" and reckless passion which disfigured and disgraced 
" the utterances of certain newspaper writers and of 
" certain other manipulators of public opinion. I 
'" know for a fact that the instructions going from 
" the office of a newspaper to its European correspond- 
" ent read in this wise: 



146 Iniquity in High Places 

" 'Send all the news that makes for war, and 
" nothing that tends to prevent or delay war.' 

"We can never approve the methods in which false- 
" hood and passion play a large part ; and we cannot 
" but assert that it were immensely better for the 
" country if results attained through war should have 
" been attained without the carnage and havoc of war. 
" Journalism that is honest and honorable is one of 
" the nation's most precious inheritances. Journalism 
" which places notoriety and pelf above truth and vir- 
" tue, and adopts as its professional tactics the stun- 
" ning sensation rather than the calm statements of 
" facts, is one of the nation's direst calamities." 

John Ireland says that the war was the "outburst of 
forces long gathering in the bosom of the nation, sure, 
at one moment or another, to break out in a resistless 
self-assertion." There can be no mistake as to the 
meaning of this language. It is identical in significa- 
tion with the expression of Bismarck, who said that 
America was a mighty young giant, bursting with anx- 
iety to vent his strength on some object. John Ireland 
says that the American people were so swollen with 
pride, so swollen with a sense of their power and 
their importance, so swollen with an appreciation of 
their great resources, their great numbers and their 
great strength, so swollen with a lust for military 
glory, with a lust for conquest, with a lust for blood, 
that an explosion was inevitable. John Ireland prac- 
tically says that the war was the outbreak of pure, un- 
disguised, unadulterated hellishness on the part of the 



Iniquity in High Places 147 

American people. In behalf of the American people 
we deny the charge. The hellishness was incarnate in 
the managers of the American Satanic Press. The 
hellishness was incarnate in the infamous demagogues 
who controlled the executive and legislative depart- 
ments of the American government. On this occa- 
sion, at least, the spirit of diabolism was not developed 
among the masses of the American people until called 
into existence and called into activity by the machina- 
tions of William McKinley and his coadjutors in crime. 
As we have before stated and claimed, though the 
human animal is by inheritance a bloodthirsty beast, 
nevertheless his love of war is always dormant and 
harmless until the tiger is unchained by wicked rulers 
for sinister and selfish purposes. And it is to be fur- 
ther observed that if the war was the "outburst of 
forces long gathering in the bosom of the nation," then 
the war did not originate in the Cuban affair. Then 
the Cuban affair was a miserable, flimsy, empty and 
false pretext and excuse for war. Then the claim that 
we were actuated by philanthropic and humanitarian 
motives in making that cowardly and brutal attack 
upon poor ohl dying Spain was brazen falsehood and 
brazen hypocrisy. 

But John Ireland says that among the causes of the 
war were "the exaggerated statements, the lies, too, 
and the calumnies, the ceaseless appeals to wild and 
reckless passion" on the part of what we term the 
American Satanic Press, and on the part of the dema- 
gogues who concluded that their political interests 



148 Iniquity in High Places 

would be subserved by following in the trail of the 
American Satanic Press. This being the case, why 
did not John Ireland then and there boldly attack the 
miscreants engaged in the concoction of this fiendish 
plot to plunge the country into a wicked war? Why 
did not John Ireland stand on the mountain tops and 
speak out in thunder tones that would reach to the 
remotest confines of the habitable globe? Why did 
not John Ireland warn the American people to turn a 
deaf ear to the infamous journals that habitually and 
unblushingly suppressed the publication of the truth 
and deluged the land with an ocean of falsehood? 
Why did John Ireland wait till the grass had grown 
green for four years over the sod that hid the pallid 
faces of our dead forever from our view before he 
discovered the simple, plain truth that the carnage 
and havoc of war are not conducive to human wel- 
fare and human improvement and human happiness? 
And yet it is not on record that he ever uttered a sin- 
gle syllable in condemnation of the policy that then 
dominated the country. Silence gives consent. And 
the individual occupying an influential position who 
stands silently by and allows his country to drift, drift, 
drift, into the abyss of war without making any effort 
to avert the catastrophe is a traitor to God and man. 
We read in Scripture that when the martyr Stephen 
was stoned to death a young man named Saul of Tar- 
sus, who afterwards became St. Paul, was a spectator 
and a sympathizer with the crime. The Scripture 
states the case with terrible simplicity : 



Iniquity in High Places 149 

"AND SAUL WAS CONSENTING UNTO HIS DEATH." 

And in like manner, over the innumerable mounds 
that cover the remains of the victims of the war, 
whether on the broad expanse of the American con- 
tinent or in the jungles of the East Indian archipelago 
or on the shores of the Mediterranean or the Carib- 
bean, over all these graves and over the floating 
charnel-houses that bring back from foreign lands 
their cargoes of American dead for burial in their na- 
tive soil, over all these should appear the inscription: 

"AND JOHN IRELAND WAS CONSENTING UNTO THEIR 
DEATH." 

But John Ireland says that the infamous conduct 
and infamous management of American newspapers 
was among the immediate causes of the war. He 
might have said that the infamous conduct and infa- 
mous management of the American newspapers was 
the grand cause, the moving cause, the effective and 
controlling cause in plunging the country into a wicked 
war. He might have said that the persons in charge 
of the legislative and executive departments of the 
American government practically abdicated their func- 
tions and became the miserable, despicable tools and 
slaves and actuaries of the Satanic Press, whose edicts 
they registered and obeyed. He might have said that 
the sensational and lying headlines of the American 
newspapers, printed in letters two inches in length, 
actually became the governing power of the country, 
and indicated and shaped the national policy. One 
of the vilest of these vile sheets in the early part of 



150 Iniquity in High Places 

the year 1898 fitted out a yacht and invited members 
of Congress to take a trip to Cuba to inspect the con- 
dition of affairs there. A number of Congressmen 
were so wanting in self-respect, and so wanting in re- 
spect for the duties of the position to which they had 
been -chosen by their people as to accept the invitation. 
The yacht stopped at Key West where the newspaper 
manager gave a banquet to his guests. In a speech 
at that banquet, Amos Cummings, a member of Con- 
gress from New York, said : 

"The journalist is greater than the statesman. The 
" journalist makes and unmakes statesmen. The new 
" journalist shapes events." 

Shapes events ! Do these words mean that the ut- 
terances of the American Satanic Press were so re- 
plete with wisdom, so fraught with sage advice and 
invaluable counsel that the American nation gladly 
indorsed and accepted them, and shaped its policy ac- 
cordingly? Not so. The words of Cummings really 
meant that the stream of falsehoods incessantly poured 
out by the American Satanic Press in regard to affairs 
in the island of Cuba had worked up more or less war 
passion among the American people ; and as the war 
passion is the strongest passion that inspires collective 
humanity, no man dared face that storm of passion, 
no man dared contend with that passion and no man 
dared contend with the Satanic Press that had engen- 
dered and developed that passion. The Satanic Press 
could not have exercised omnipotence in effecting leg- 
islation on tariffs or legislation on trusts ; but by rea- 



Iniquity in High Places 151 

son of the beastly and unquenchable thirst of the 
human race for human blood, the Satanic Press was 
omnipotent in plunging the country into a wicked war. 
Yes. The fiendish new journalist did shape events. 
The lying American newspapers made that Spanish 
war. 

The character of the American Satanic Press is re- 
vealed in an incident that occurred in Chicago in 1894 
at the time when the country was convulsed and par- 
alyzed by the great railroad strike under the leadership 
of Eugene V. Debs. The manager of a paper directed 
a reporter to go and get the news in a certain quarter 
of the city that had been a scene of turbulence. The 
reporter repaired to the locality and after traversing 
the streets in all directions found that the excitement 
had subsided. He returned to the office and informed 
the manager that all was quiet. The manager spoke 
in positive tones : 

"go and get the news." 

The reporter obeyed the directions and went over 
the same ground, searching for indications of trouble 
and finding none. He again returned to the office and 
informed the manager that there was no disturbance 
and no prospect of any disturbance. 

"GO AND GET THE NEWS," 
said the manager sternly. The reporter knew what 
was meant. He knew that if he did not bring in a 
horrible story he would be discharged as incompe- 
tent. He stepped into a back office and wrote out a 
blood-curdling account of mobs and riots and violence 



152 Iniquity in High Places 

and pillage and arson and bloodshed. His work was 
satisfactory. The enterprising manager of an Amer- 
ican newspaper does not propose to be beaten in lying 
by the publishers of any rival sheets. 

John Ireland also says that he knew for a fact that 
the instructions going from the office of an American 
newspaper to its European correspondent read in this 
wise : 

"Send all the news that makes for war, and nothing 
that tends to prevent or delay war." 

That is' enough. That is conclusive. That single 
item furnishes the key to the whole situation. That 
single item turns the X-ray on the black hearts and 
black souls of the managers of the American Satanic 
Press and with absolute exactness gauges and fathoms 
the depth of their iniquity. The Latin adage runs in 
this wise: "Suppressio veri, suggestio falsi." Thfc 
suppression of truth is the suggestion of falsehood. 
And in point of criminality the action of a public jour- 
nal in suppressing the truth does not differ from the 
suggestion and utterance of positive falsehood by the 
most infinitesimal part of a hair's breadth. And as a 
matter of fact the Satanic Press poured forth an end- 
less flood of lies. We may say that over the doorways 
leading to the offices of all the managers of the Amer- 
ican Satanic Press there appeared for the instruction 
of subordinates the following directions : 

"Suppress all truth that promises peace, and 
manufacture all falsehoods that will encour- 
AGE WAR." 



Iniquity in High Places 153 

And the facilities for the manufacture of falsehood 
in regard to Cuban affairs were all that could be de- 
sired by the most accomplished and inveterate of liars. 
To the average American the interior of the island 
of Cuba was a terra incognita. The average Amer- 
ican in his home in the United States had no means 
of verifying or disputing any statements that might 
be made in regard to occurrences in Cuba. As a mat- 
ter of fact there were few or no Americans in Cuba 
except such as were sent there by the Satanic Press 
to gather material that would give variety and plausi- 
bility to their falsehoods. As a specimen of the 
Cuban news that was daily laid before the American 
people by the Satanic Press we give the following : 

SPANISH FIENDS! 



Horrible Atrocity. 



Tortured to Death. 



WHOLESALE MASSACRE OF INNOCENT AND HELPLESS 
PEOPLE. 



Key West, Nov. 10, 1897. — Full particulars have 
reached this place in regard to the savage and atro- 
cious deeds of the Spanish troops at a village forty 
miles from Caramanjurillo. The Spanish entered the 
place and made prisoners of all the people, who were 
then herded together. The Spanish bound all the men 



154 Iniquity in High Places 

hand and foot and then took them out and hung them 
up by the heels and roasted them to death over slow 
fires. Every one of the women and children were shot 
or bayoneted. After burning the houses the Spanish 
abandoned the place, leaving the bodies of their vic- 
tims upon the ground as food for buzzards and vul- 
tures. A band of brave and noble and devoted Cuban 
patriots speedily assembled and went in pursuit of the 
Spanish. On overtaking them a fierce engagement 
ensued in which the Spanish were defeated with great 
slaughter. The Cubans treated their Spanish prisoners 
with their usual kindness, notwithstanding the fact 
that some of the Cubans were residents of the village 
that had been destroyed, and lost all their relatives in 
the horrible massacre. 



All persons who remember the drift and tenor of 
the so-called telegraphic dispatches purporting to 
come from Key West or other points just previous to 
the outbreak of the Spanish war will observe that 
those alleged dispatches were similar in spirit and sub- 
stance to the one we have here given. In the manu- 
facture of these alleged telegraphic dispatches the 
necessary ingredients were Spanish atrocity, Cuban 
suffering, Cuban valor, Cuban victory and Cuban 
magnanimity. These ingredients were mixed in dif- 
ferent proportions on different occasions, and were at 
all times set forth with lurid and varied embellish- 
ments. And right here we challenge the American of 
ordinary intelligence and the American of extraordi- 



Iniquity in High Places 155 

nary intelligence to dispute and disprove the statements 
made in this alleged telegram we have here given. It 
is hardly necessary to say that such challenge will not 
be accepted. It is hardly necessary to say that no one 
would dream for an instant of wasting any time or 
wasting any effort in attempting to track down and 
track home newspaper falsehoods in regard to matters 
alleged to have transpired in localities so remote. And 
yet this pretended telegram is a pure fabrication which 
we have manufactured and inserted here for the pur- 
pose of showing the ease with which the incarnate 
devils of the Satanic Press can invent falsehood, and 
the readiness with which the mass of American read- 
ers are prepared to accept falsehood. It may be men- 
tioned incidentally that the name Caramanjurillo was 
coined for use in this pretended telegram. No place 
of that name is known in the island of Cuba. The 
scene of the alleged massacre was therefore forty 
miles from nowhere. This trifling circumstance, how- 
ever, would not in any manner disconcert the experi- 
enced manufacturer of newspaper lies, and would not 
diminish the effectiveness of the false telegram as a 
means of "firing the Northern heart" and preparing 
the way for war. 

But right alongside of this pretended telegram 
which did not appear in any public journal we will 
give the headlines of pretended telegrams that were 
actually published by the Satanic Press and spread 
broadcast throughout the land in furtherance of the 
wicked scheme to plunge the country into war. It is 



156 Iniquity in High Places 

to be noted that the present is the era of sensational 
headlines. Neither the business man nor the working 
man can afford time to wade through all the printed 
matter to be found in the columns of the daily jour- 
nals. A fleeting glance at the headlines must suffice. 
It is the sensational headline that makes the first and 
deepest and most lasting impression upon the mind. 
The human heart and mind and soul yearns for excite- 
ment. The morbid appetite of the victim of delirium 
tremens craves for the fiery alcoholic potion rather 
than for the cool, clear water from the running spring. 
The morbid appetite of the public for exciting news 
craves for the sensational lie rather than for the plain, 
simple, sober truth. The biggest kind of a lie printed 
in the biggest kind of type finds the biggest kind of a 
market. Sensational headlines now rule the world. 
But we will proceed to give the headlines of pretended 
telegrams. They are credited to the Satanic Press 
which is a comprehensive generic term. We also have 
a register of the particular journals. 

From the Satanic Press, Dec. 30, 1896. 

SPANIARDS SLAY WOMEN OF CUBA. 



Soldiers Raid a Village and Kill and Burn. 



LOOT THE HOUSES AXD ROD THE IXHABITAXTS. 



FLOG YOUNG GIRLS AND SHOOT THE WOMEN. 



MASSACRE OF THE PEOPLE REGARDLESS OF SEX OR AGE. 



VICTIMS CAST INTO BURNING HOUSES. 



Iniquity in High Places 157 

From the Satanic Press, Jan. 28, 1897. 

KILLED GIRLS BY WHOLESALE. 



Atrocious Crimes by Butcher Weyler's Soldiers. 



SHOCKING DISCOVERY IN A LONELY CAVE NEAR 
GUANABACOA. 



FOURTEEN MAIDENS HACKED TO PIECES AND THEIR 
BONES LEFT FOR DOGS TO GNAW. 



From the Satanic Press, Feb. 2, 1897. 

SHOOTING OF A BRAVE CUBAN PATRIOT 
ON THE PLAINS OF SANTA CLARA. 



A Hero Sacrificed to the Vengeful Lust of the 
Cruel and Merciless Spaniards. 



From the Satanic Press, Feb. 12, 1897. 

SAVAGERY OF SPANIARDS. 



Ravaging Cuba with Fire and Sword by the 
Brutal Soldiers of Merciless Weyler. 



OUTRAGE UPON OUTRAGE ON AMERICAN CITIZENS AND 
CUBANS. 



158 Iniquity in High Places 

From the Satanic Press, Feb. 16, 1897. 

BRUTAL WEYLER. 



His Savage Soldiers Are Killing People, Selling 
Children and Burning Houses. 



WORK OF DESTRUCTION IS UNCEASING. 



From the Satanic Press, Feb. 20, 1897. 

FOUL DEED OF SPANIARDS. 



Another American Falls Victim to Their Bar- 
barous Methods. 



RICARDO RUIZ FOUND DEAD IN A FILTHY DUNGEON AT 
GUANABACOA. 



From the Satanic Press, April 9, 1897. 

SPAIN'S CRUELTY TO AMERICANS. 



Barbarous Treatment of Prisoners. 



tales of horror from the dungeons of CUBA. 



From the Satanic Press, April 14, 1897. 

VICTIMS OF THE SPANIARDS. 



Butcher Weyler Murdering Cubans. 



THE WIDOWS ARE MOURNING THEIR DEAD. 



Iniquity in High Places 159 

From the Satanic Press, April 29, 1897. 

CUBAN TOWN DESTROYED. 



Nothing Left but Blood and Ashes. 



150 PEOPLE BUTCHERED. 



From the Satanic Press, July 12, 1897. 

SAVAGE DEEDS BY WEYLER'S MEN. 



Spanish Soldiers Attack Forty Helpless Women 
and Children. 



ATROCITY COMMITTED IN THE PROVINCE OF 
SANTA CLARA. 



From the Satanic Press, Jan. 7, 1897. 

CRY TO HEAVEN FOR VENGEANCE. 



Stories of Spanish Atrocities Almost Beyond 
Belief. 



SIXTEEN BODIES DISCOVERED IN A RAVINE NEAR 
GUANABACOA. 



From the Satanic Press, Nov. 16, 1896. 

CUBA CRIES FOR HELP. 



Civilization and Humanity Demand Relief. 



160 Iniquity in High Places 

From the Satanic Press, Jan. 14, 1897. 

NOW IS THE TIME TO INTERVENE IN CUBA. 



Spain Would be Driven from the Seas in Case 
of War. 



THE FORTS AT HAVANA COULD NOT STOP THE YANKEES. 



From the Satanic Press, Feb. 13, 1897. 

SPANISH INSOLENCE DEMANDS REPROOF. 



The United States Should Discipline the 
Haughty Dons. 



SHIPS OF WAR OUGHT TO BE SENT TO HAVANA. 



From the Satanic Press, Feb. 21, 1897. 

PLOT OF SPAIN AGAINST AMERICA. 



Details of the Conspiracy. 



From the Satanic Press, Nov. 17, 1896. 

WAR WITH SPAIN IS POSSIBLE. 



Would Sink Spanish Fleets. 



Iniquity in High Places 161 

Prom the Satanic Press, Nov. 13, 1896. 

AMERICAN GOVERNMENT GETTING READY 
FOR CONFLICT. 



Hurried Preparations to Guard Against Spanish 
Invasion. 



FORTIFICATIONS ALONG THE GULF AND ATLANTIC 
COASTS READY FOR ARMAMENT. 



MEN WORKING NIGHT AND DAY TO GET THE SHIPS OF 
THE ATLANTIC SQUADRON READY FOR SERVICE. 



From the Satanic Press, Jan. 13, 1898. 

HAVANA MOBS MAY GIVE McKINLEY 

CAUSE FOR INTERVENTION 

IN CUBA. 



War or Peace the Issue Now Trembling in the 
Scale. 



These last headlines should receive close inspection. 
A mob in Havana composed mainly of Spanish Vol- 
unteers had sacked several newspaper offices. Not a 
single individual was injured and the mob was im- 
mediately suppressed by troops from the neighbor- 
ing- forts. And yet the American Satanic Press had 
the brazen impudence to insinuate or intimate that this 
circumstance might justify the American Government 
in making war upon Spain ! When was it established 



1 62 Iniquity in High Places 

as a principle of international law that the outbreak of 
a mob in any one country justified foreign nations in 
making war upon that country? A few years ago 
there were terrible riots in the City of Prague in the 
Austrian Empire. The intense hatred prevailing be- 
tween the German element of the population and the 
native Czech element broke out in desperate fighting 
in which many lives were lost and much property de- 
stroyed. Did any one in America claim that this cir- 
cumstance might give the President of the United 
States cause for intervention in Austrian affairs ? Did 
any one suggest that an Amercan fleet should cross 
the Atlantic Ocean, pass through the Mediterranean 
Sea, pass up the Adriatic and commence bombarding 
the Austrian city of Trieste on account of a mob 
in another Austrian city several hundred miles dis- 
tant? When France was convulsed by the Dreyfus 
agitation the whole population of that country was 
possessed of a spirit of relentless animosity toward the 
Jewish race. That feeling spread across the Mediter- 
ranean to the French province of Algeria in Africa. 
A mob attacked the Jewish quarter in the city of Al- 
giers, murdered Jewish merchants and plundered and 
destroyed their property. Did any one in America 
claim that this circumstance might give the President 
of the United States cause for intervention in French 
affairs ? Did any one suggest that an American fleet 
should enter the harbor of Marseilles and bombard 
that French city? In 1863, during our Civil War-, 
there was a terrible draft riot in the citv of New 



Iniquity in High Places 163 

York. As there was not a sufficient number of vol- 
untary enlistments to keep the armies in the field up 
to the required standard of strength the Government 
of the United States was under the necessity of resort- 
ing- to draft to obtain soldiers. The draft was en- 
forced in New York city as well as in other places. 
The city was divided into districts with specified 
boundaries. In each of these districts the names of 
all men subject to military duty were collected by 
government officials. The names were written on 
separate strips of paper, and each strip was rolled up 
in the form of a ball and placed in a glass jar to be 
drawn therefrom by lot. Of course this proceeding 
was intensely disagreeable to the masses of the peo- 
ple. If a workingman had a wife and children to 
support, it would seem to be a terrible outrage that 
he should be seized by force of arms and dragged to 
a battlefield a thousand miles away and compelled to 
fight for his life, and possibly compelled to sacrifice 
his life in expiation of the sins of the politicians who 
made the war. When the time came for commencing 
the draft a great crowd gathered in each district to 
watch the operation. A slight commotion having oc- 
curred in one district the crowd made a rush for the 
platform, drove off the Government officials, smashed 
the glass jars and scattered their contents over the 
floor. As soon as the news of this violence spread 
abroad a similar explosion occurred in every other 
district and a howling mob took possession of the city. 
As the war was the result of the quarrel between the 



164 Iniquity in High Places 

North and the South in regard to negro slavery the 
New York mob, with the brutal and beastly idiocy 
characteristic of all mobs, apparently considered that 
the negroes of their city were responsible for the 
war. Negroes were therefore slaughtered without 
mercy, wherever found. If a negro appeared upon the 
street he was hunted down and brained like a mad 
dog. The body of a murdered negro was suspended 
from a branch of a tree in the park at the City Hall, 
and a fire was built under it for the purpose of con- 
suming the corpse. 

But suppose that the English newspapers of that 
period were in the hands of miscreants as foul and 
fiendish and depraved as those who were in control 
of the American Satanic Press at the time of the Span- 
ish war or who are in control of the American Satanic 
Press at this day and date. Suppose that the British 
Satanic Press was striving with all its might and main 
to force the British government to make an attack upon 
the United States. Suppose that the British Satanic 
Press was determined to take advantage of the pend- 
ing opportunity to crush the American Union into 
jarring and quarreling fragments that would be pow- 
erless and harmless forevermore. Suppose that the 
British Satanic Press was constantly demanding that 
the British government should intervene in the af- 
fairs of the United States. Suppose that the British 
Satanic Press was demanding that the British Navy 
should gather at Halifax as a menace and a threat to 
the United States just as the American Navy was 



Iniquity in High Places 165 

gathered at Key West as a menace and threat to Spain 
in 1898. Suppose that the British Satanic Press was 
demanding that the British Navy should swoop down 
with resistless force upon the American coast, com- 
pletely and hopelessly blockading and sealing up the 
Northern ports, and opening the ports of the South and 
the cotton trade of the South to the commerce of the 
world, driving the Stars and Stripes off the ocean and 
enabling the rebel flag to fl6at in undisturbed repose 
from the masthead of vessels in every quarter of the 
globe. Suppose that the British Satanic Press in its 
every daily issue plastered over the surface of the 
British Islands with broad sheets of falsehood in re- 
gard to American affairs. Suppose that with glaring- 
sensational headlines the American Union armies were 
charged with the commission of the most horrible 
atrocities upon the people of the Southern States. Sup- 
pose that the riot in New York had been announced 
in the following language : 

NEW YORK MOB MAY GIVE QUEEN VIC- 
TORIA CAUSE FOR INTERVENTION IN 

THE UNITED STATES. 



War of Peace the Issue Now Trembling in 

the Scale. 

If the British press in 1863 had made use of such 
language in regard to the New York riot we can read- 
ily imagine what the feelings of the American people 
would have been. The American people would have 



166 Iniquity in High Places 

been most rightfully and righteously indignant at such 
outrageous impudence and such unparalleled meanness. 
And yet when the American Satanic Press used pre- 
cisely the same language in regard to Spanish affairs 
in Cuba the American people listened without appar- 
ent sense of shame and without any apparent com- 
punctions of conscience. Our opinions in regard to 
any particular act of injustice and iniquity depend 
largely upon the question as to whether we are the 
victims or the perpetrators of that injustice and in- 
iquity. 

The sensational headlines, which we have here 
given, fully substantiate our claim that the origin of 
that wicked, piratical Spanish war is directly trace- 
able to the American Satanic press, the foulest and 
most loathsome of all fungous growths upon the mod- 
ern body social and body politic. It is said that an 
individual who persistently persecutes an innocent 
victim — who persistently practices brutality and 
cruelty and iniquity upon an innocent victim — finally 
comes to hate that victim with a hatred that passes 
description. It may possibly be said that it was in 
accordance with this law of nature that the attitude 
of the American Satanic Press toward Spain was de- 
veloped. The Satanic Press had for so long a time 
reviled and slandered Spain, had for so long a time 
belied and maligned a nation that was peaceable and 
friendly and innocent and unoffending so far as the 
United States was concerned that that press became 
entirely demoniac in spirit and temper. And the 



Iniquity in High Places 167 

rampant diabolism of the American Satanic Press as 
revealed in these lying" headlines is patent to all ob- 
servers. Every word and every syllable in these lines 
gleams with malice and hate — gleams with fierce and 
insatiable desire for the shedding of innocent blood. 
And the constant exhibition of this fiendish malignity, 
the constant iteration ana reiteration of these foul 
falsehoods must have had its effect in poisoning the 
public mind, and in paving the way for plunging the 
country into a most iniquitous and most unnecessary 
war. We repeat our former quotation from the 
words of John Ireland : 

"Among the immediate causes of the war there 
" are to be numbered the exaggerated statements, the 
" lies, too, the calumnies, the ceaseless appeals to wild 
" and reckless passion which disfigured and disgraced 
" the utterances of certain newspaper writers and of 
" certain other manipulators of public opinion." 

Just here we wish to make another quotation from 
the utterances of Archbishop Ireland. The Dreyfus 
affair will be remembered by all. Dreyfus was a 
Jewish officer in the Fr.ench army, and apparently for 
no other reason than the fact that he was a Jew a 
conspiracv seems to have been formed to drive him 
out of the army by making false charges against him. 
He was accused of selling French military secrets to 
the German Government. He was convicted on 
forged and perjured testimony, and sent to a prison 
in the deadly tropical climate of French Guiana, in 
South America. After the lapse of four years his 



:68 Iniquity in High Places 

case was reopened, and he was brought back to 
France for a second trial. All France was soon in a 
terrible ferment. The mighty power of the military 
department of the government was strenuously exert- 
ed for the purpose of crushing Dreyfus and shielding 
the men who had borne false witness against him. 
The vast majority of the nation sympathized with the 
army. The whole country was seething with intense 
excitement that threatened to break out in a vol- 
canic explosion of popular violence against the gov- 
ernment. An incident that occurred at this time 
shows the dangerous state of public feeling. A judge 
of the court in which Dreyfus was to be tried had 
occasion to appoint some person to perform certain 
duties in connection with the trial. It was alleged 
that he appointed a particular individual because that 
individual was friendly to Dreyfus. The judge in- 
dignantly denied the charge. He said that he ap- 
pointed that individual because he was an unmarried 
man, and would therefore more boldly face the 
threats of death made against all persons who should 
do their duty in connection with the trial than would a 
married man, who would shrink from the prospect of 
assassination for fear his wife and children would be 
left destitute in the world. 

But the court dared not grant an acquittal to Drey- 
fus, even though there was no credible evidence 
against him. The court dared not face the storm of 
popular wrath that an acquittal would produce. An 
attempt was made to appease the excited populace by 



Iniquity in High Places 169 

finding Dreyfus guilty of an alleged breach of duty, 
which was of minor importance, requiring only the 
semblance of a penalty. 

The American people watched the Dreyfus trial 
with the closest attention. When it was found that 
the ends of justice had not been clearly and fully at- 
tained there was, to say the least, a strong feeling of 
dissatisfaction. It was proposed to hold an indigna- 
tion meeting, or a series of meetings, to voice the sen- 
timents of the American people in regard to the action 
of the French Government and French court. In 
reference to the proposed indignation meeting. John 
Ireland, on September 13, 1899, at St. Paul, Minne- 
sota, said : 

"It is my belief that public meetings in America, 
" such as it is proposed to hold for the purpose of 
" protesting against the sentence of the Rennes court- 
" martial, are untimely, unfair to France, and likely 
" to breed regrettable ill-feeling between that country 
" and our own. I shall not deny that I always had in 
" my heart deep sympathy for the unfortunate officer 
" who has been under trial in Rennes, and that I had 
" wished and hoped that the sentence of the court 
" would be one of acquittal. But it Is another ques- 
" tion to face the verdict of the court the moment that 
" verdict has been declared with the assertion that it 
" is plainly against truth, and that the court from 
" which it issues is guilty of base injustice and sacri- 
" legions perjury. And it is still more so another 
" question to lay upon France the crime of the ver- 



170 Iniquity in High Places 

" diet, if crime there be in it, and to throw at a whole 
" people and at their government insulting epithets. 
" Let us wait. 

"This whole matter belongs to the internal life and 
" to the internal administration of France, and inter- 
" national courtesy as well as justice bid us talk about 
" it very carefully and very slowly. France is a 
" proud and sensitive nation. She will deeply resent, 
" as it is her right, undue criticism and hasty judg- 
" ment of her acts by a foreign people, and especially 
" will she resent, as it is surely her right, any un- 
" called for interference with her internal adminis- 
" tration and any imprudent challening of her national 
" honor." 

Observe the tender solicitude with which the rev- 
erend gentleman would shield French sensibilities 
from unfavorable comments on French national af- 
fairs. He says that France is a proud, sensitive na- 
tion. Why could he not have said that Spain was a 
proud, sensitive nation ? He says that France will 
deeply resent, as it is her right, any undue criticism 
of her acts by a foreign people. Why could he not 
have said that Spain will deeply resent, as it is her 
right, any undue criticism of her acts by a foreign 
people? He says that France will especially resent, 
as it is surely her right, any uncalled for interference 
with her internal administration. Why could he not 
have said that Spain will especially resent, as it is 
surely her right, any uncalled for interference with 
her internal administration ? Was it because France 



Iniquity in High Places 171 

was a great and powerful nation that the archbishop 
would hush all disrespectful remarks in regard to the 
management of French internal affairs? Was it be- 
cause Spain was a weak, feeble, dying nation, that 
the archbishop listened in approving silence to the 
foul falsehoods of the American Satanic Press and 
American Satanic demagogues in regard to Spanish 
affairs, and shouted in rapturous joy when William 
McKinley subjugated and slaughtered Spanish 
peoples? William McKinley, as the reincarnation of 
the beastliness that inspired and controlled the bloody 
conquerors, the wholesale murderers of ages past, 
might, in strict keeping with his own character, have 
insisted that the weak have no rights to life, liberty, 
or property, which the strong are bound to respect ; 
but John Ireland, as the professed servant or profes- 
sional servant of Jesus Christ, would find it difficult 
to quote any utterances of the Master that would au- 
thorize him to serve as clerical puppet in William Mc- 
Kinley's triumphal train or as clerical eulogist of Wil- 
liam McKinley 's damnable deeds. It is true that four 
years after these events transpired the archbishop in- 
dulged in some lamentations over their occurrence, but 
by that time the blood in which that particular page 
of American history was written had become entirely 
dry, and the archbishop's crocodile tears had no effect 
in wiping out the record of his cowardly cringing, 
fawning servility to the wickedest of men, or his open, 
shameless abandonment of his duties to his God. 

But while the piratical attack upon Spain in 1898 



172 Iniquity in High Places 

drew its inspiration from the foul falsehoods of the 
American Satanic Press, nevertheless the managers 
of the Satanic Press cannot be charged with official 
responsibility for the commission of the crime. The 
official responsibility rests upon the persons in control 
of the American Government. It rests upon the 
worthless, weak and wicked national executive and 
national Congress. And, furthermore, it is hardly 
necessary to say that the managers of the Satanic 
Press cannot be held accountable on the score of 
moral responsibility. They would seem to be too low 
down in the scale of being to be able to appreciate 
even the simplest and most primary form of moral 
truth. Thev would seem to be entirely devoid of 
moral perceptions or moral sense. If any of them 
were endowed by heredity with a moral germ that was 
susceptible of fruitful development — if any of them 
ever had any moral fiber or moral stamina in their 
composition, these inconvenient appurtenances and 
equipments would have been completely rotted out of 
their nature in the atmosphere of total depravity that 
pervades their establishments. 

We are now confronted with the plain fact, the in- 
disputable truth, that the American Congress and the 
American Executive were responsible for the Span- 
ish war. No member of Congress who voted for 
that horrid measure can escape the charge of delib- 
erate, cold-blooded murder except under the plea of 
hopeless idiocy. And yet the temptation to commit 
cold-blooded murder in a case of this kind is one of 



Iniquity in High Places 173 

the strongest temptations to which human nature can 
ever be exposed. The temptation in such a case is sure 
to overcome the scruples of the average member of any 
legislative body in Christendom or Heathendom. In 
the early stages of a war movement, when its strength 
is undeveloped and uncertain, it may be possible for a 
legislator, without jeopardizing his political future, to 
insist that the maintenance of peace is required by 
every consideration of wisdom and policy and justice 
and duty and right. But when it becomes an estab- 
lished fact that votes enough have been secured to in- 
sure a declaration of war by any legislative body, then 
woe to that man who dares to utter a protest against 
the needless shedding of human blood. Woe to that 
man who is so reckless as to plant himself in the path- 
way of the onrushing automobile of Moloch and Jug- 
gernaut. It would be better for that man that he 
had never been born. It would be better for that 
man that a millstone were fastened about his neck 
and he were cast into the sea. He is politically 
doomed and damned. He becomes an object of 
hatred and contempt. Wherever he goes the finger 
of scorn is pointed at him : 

"There is the man who would not support his 
" country's cause in the hour of danger. There is 
" the man who would not protect the nation's honor. 
" There is the man who would not preserve, untar- 
" nishedj the glories of the nation's flag." 

The individual who is the target of this storm of 
popular opprobrium can find an escape only in the 



174 Iniquity in High Places 

shades of oblivion. It will be readily understood that 
no legislator covets any such ignominious termination 
of his public career. The supreme desire, the all-con- 
trolling ambition of the politician who has succeeded 
in worming his way into a seat in the American Con- 
gress is to be his own successor in office, and to be 
his own continuous successor in office until the time 
when he can make use of that office as a stepping- 
stone to a place of greater power and greater renown 
and greater emolument. His grand object is to dis- 
charge his official duties in a manner that will win 
the favor of his constituents and insure his re-election 
by constantly increasing majorities. He stands ready 
to pander to any popular whim that promises to yield 
him substantial and lasting returns. As the human 
animal is possessed of an eternal and insatiable thirst 
for human gore, your legislator is prepared to deal 
out a sop of blood to placate the clamorous, wolfish, 
tigerish crowd. In 1898, when the foul falsehoods 
of the American Satanic Press and the foul falsehoods 
of the American Satanic demagogues on the floor of 
Congress had apparently succeeded in developing 
some slight symptoms of a war feeling among the 
American people, each and every member of Con- 
gress stood face to face with this alternative : 

"By insisting on the preservation of peace I shall 
" commit political suicide. By engaging in the work 
" of cutting innocent Spanish throats I shall win pop- 
" ularity and glory. Which course shall I take?" 

The answer to this question comes like an electric 



Iniquity in High Places 175 

flash. Throat-cutting wins. Throat-cutting- is the 
program. Throat-cutting is the order of the day. 
And yet there was absolutely no occasion whatever 
for an attack upon Spain. The Spanish Government 
had ordered that the war in Cuba be stopped. The 
Spanish Government had ordered that the reconcen- 
trados be allowed to return to their homes. The 
Spanish Government had ordered an appropriation 
of funds for the relief of the reconcentrados. The 
Spanish Government had thrown open all Cuban ports 
and permitted the importation, free of tariff charges, 
of all food donated for the aid of the suffering people. 
The steamship lines between New York and Cuba 
were loaded down with charitable contributions of 
food which they carried and delivered free of cost. 
The Cuban railroads carried all this food free of 
charge throughout the length and breadth of the 
island. A stream of supplies had already reached 
Cuba sufficient to meet all wants. The American 
Congress knew this, and the American Congress also 
knew that if war were declared the supplies would 
be cut off and starvation would be renewed with ag- 
gravated intensity. And yet that Congress had not 
the moral courage to take a determined stand in favor 
of the maintenance of peace. 

There are times in the discharge of their duty when 
men should not only face denunciation and obloquy 
and ostracism, but should even defy threatened and 
certain death. Suppose you are a member of a 
workingmen's revolutionary committee in St. Peters- 



1 76 Iniquity in High Places 

burg. You fall into the hands of the Czar's soldiers. 
You are informed that orders have been received that 
whenever and wherever you may be captured you 
shall instantly be put to death without trial ; but if 
you will reveal the names of your colleagues on the 
committee, and also reveal the location of the head- 
quarters of the organization you will be dismissed 
and allowed to leave the country in safety. You 
promptly reply that the Czar may have the power to 
put you to death, but he has not power enough to 
compel you or bribe you to betray your colleagues 
or to betray the cause to which your heart and soul 
and life are devoted. If you perish then and there 
the world will laud you as a hero. 

Suppose you were a Jew in Kishineff or Odessa 
at the time when the most brutal and beastly of mobs 
was engaged in torturing and mangling and burning 
and disemboweling and rending in pieces all the 
Jewish men, women and children upon whom they 
could lay hands. The mob has ravaged and murdered 
for several successive days. It is now sweeping 
down the street in search of new victims. A large 
number of Jewish women and children are huddled 
together and hidden in some attic or cellar in hope 
of saving their lives. The mob has not been able to 
find them. Just at this juncture you fall into the 
hands of the mob while you are making a vain effort 
to escape from the city in disguise. The mob is 
about to stab and shoot and beat and trample you 
to death when a thought occurs to one of the leaders. 



Iniquity in High Places 177 

He says to you that if you will show them where the 
woman and children are to be found your life will 
be spared. You instantly reply that you will not 
assist him in murdering- innocent women and chil- 
dren, even to save your own life. And you go to 
vour inevitable doom, but with a conscience unsullied 
by the proposed crime. 

Suppose that in the Boxer era in China a number 
of American missionaries are captured by a mob. 
Their doom is apparently sealed. But the Chinese 
resort to a refinement of cruelty. One of the mis- 
sionaries has a family. The Chinese bind the wife 
and children securely together and place them upon 
a box containing a large .quantity of dynamite. A 
wire connected with this dynamite leads to a safe dis- 
tance, where arrangements are made for effecting an 
explosion. The husband and father of the family is 
brought forward and told that if he will press the 
button and explode the dynamite his life will be 
spared. He refuses. "Press the button or die," 
comes the order. He says that he will not murder 
his wife and children to save his own life. He is 
immediately cut to pieces. A second missionary is 
now brought forward, and told that if he will press 
the button his life will be spared. He refuses. 
"Press the button or die," comes the order. He says 
that he will not murder the wife and children of any 
man on earth in order to save his own life. He is 
instantly struck down. A third missionary is brought 
forward. "Press the button or die," comes the order. 



178 Iniquity in High Places 

He says he will not murder a single innocent human 
being in the world in order to save his own life. He, 
too, is slaughtered. 

In like manner, in 1898, when the proposition was 
made to plunge the country into a most unnecessary 
and most iniquitous war, when the proposition was 
made to inaugurate an era of wholesale murder in 
which a countless host of innocent and helpless human 
beings would lose their lives, each and every member 
of the American Congress should have died in his 
tracks in the halls of the Capitol sooner than commit 
such a crime. But politicians and martyrs are not 
manufactured from the same grade of raw material. 
• Practically every member of Congress came forward 
and pressed the button which opened the floodgates 
of hell and put in motion a wave of blood that 
swept around the world. And they were not com- 
pelled to do this in order to save their physical lives. 
Their superlatively valuable lives were in no danger. 
They did it to make a few paltry votes for re-election. 
They did it to increase their popularity. They did it 
to strengthen and perpetuate their political power by 
gratifying the bloodthirsty propensities of the human 
animal. In the House of Representatives all but two 
or three members assisted in opening up this carnival 
of death. Three hundred and twelve members voted 
for war. Three hundred and twelve moral cowards ! 
Three hundred and twelve blood-stained assassins ! 
Three hundred and twelve traitors to their country, 
to humanity and God ! 



Iniquity in High Places 179 

We use the term, "traitors to their country," de- 
liberately. The expression has pertinence, signifi- 
cance, force, as well as absolute truth. In speaking 
of the country to which these recreant and red-handed 
Congressional officials are supposed to have belonged, 
we do not refer to geographical outlines or geographi- 
cal areas. We do not refer to millions of square 
miles and billions of acres of territory. We do not 
refer to mountains and plains and rivers and lakes 
and harbors and bays. We do not refer to the in- 
finite extent and variety of natural resources, which, 
under the hands of hosts of artisans and toilers, are 
daily taking on the form of visible and tangible 
wealth. We do not refer to the miraculous achieve- 
ments of mechanical genius that have set the continent 
awhir with the wheels of industry, and covered the 
land from ocean to ocean with a network of iron high- 
ways that bind all sections from center to circum- 
ference into an indissoluble unity. We do not refer 
to the millions and millions of swelling population 
which are but a fraction of the number that are .yet 
to fill and crowd the national fold. In this age of 
material progress the varied phenomena which we 
have here noted are not confined to any one country, 
but are manifest, at least to some extent, in nearly 
every quarter of the globe. 

But the America to which we refer is the America 
in whose heart and soul and life at the very outset 
of national existence were enshrined the immortal 
principles enunciated by the fathers in 1776. We 



180 Iniquity in High Places 

again call attention to the Declaration of Independ- 
ence : 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident : That 
" all men are created equal ; that they are endowed 
" by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ; 
" that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit 
" of happiness. That, to secure these rights, govern- 
" ments are instituted among men, deriving their just 
" powers from the consent of the governed." 

This quotation is sufficient. It covers the whole 
case. In its few brief words are to be found volumes 
of instruction and inspiration. It is the Sermon on 
the Mount as applied to the affairs of governments 
and the affairs of nations. In the assertion and ap- 
plication of these sacred principles the noble and 
glorious American republic of the olden time, the 
noble and glorious American republic of more than a 
hundred years ago, burst in beauty ineffable upon the 
gaze of an astonished and admiring world. The fires 
kindled upon the altars of Liberty in Amreica beamed 
with a radiance that illumed the darkest corners of 
the earth. To the suffering and down-trodden mil- 
lions of the Old World the Star of the West was a 
sign, a token and a promise that the doors of their 
prison-house of bondage would yet be thrown open 
and they be allowed to go free. 

The wording of the Declaration of Independence 
will bear the closest scrutiny and analysis. If the 
Creator endowed all men with an inalienable right to 
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then no man 



Iniquity in High Places 181 

and no combination of men have any right to wickedly 
and wantonly attack and rob and murder their fellow- 
men. If governments were instituted for the sacred 
purpose of securing to all men their inalienable rights 
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then no 
government has any right to oppress or plunder its 
own people, or to conquer and trample down and en- 
slave and butcher the people of any other nation, race 
or tribe. The Declaration of Independence placed the 
new-born American nation, the new-born child of Lib- 
erty, upon a plane of action vastly, inconceivably, 
above the previous level of humanity as that level had 
been manifest in all lands and all ages of the world. 
The Declaration of Independence practically and un- 
mistakably affirmed that in all affairs and dealings be- 
tween governments and nations, as in all affairs and 
dealings between individuals, the supreme standard of 
action should be the Golden Rule : 

"Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto 
you do ye even so to them." 

If the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence 
were accepted and acted upon by all the nations, the 
implements of war would everywhere be cast aside and 
the world would witness the glorious dawn of the era 
of universal and eternal peace. The American doc- 
trine, as enunciated by the fathers, practically main- 
tains that mankind should be governed by the law of 
love. The doctrine of the old world as interpreted in 
the light of history reaching back to the remotest ages 
practically maintains that mankind should be gov- 



182 Iniquity in High Places 

erned by the law of brute force. The American doc- 
trine virtually affirms that nations and states and 
peoples should be drawn together and held together 
only by the bonds of mutual affection and mutual in- 
terest, and that the tramp of a hireling soldiery should 
be heard no more in all the land. The doctrine of 
the old world virtually affirms that the strong may of 
right subjugate and enslave and slaughter the weak, 
and that recalcitrant nations may be ruthlessly crushed 
to earth and pinned down by bayonets. 

We have said that the members of the American 
Congress that declared war against Spain in 1898 were 
traitors to their country, to humanity and God. We 
repeat the charge. They were traitors to God and 
man by reason of the fact that they wickedly and 
wantonly opened up an era of wholesale murder, in 
which they could not have failed to know that un- 
numbered myriads of innocent and helpless victims 
would perish. They were traitors to their country by 
reason of the fact that they robbed that country of 
her crown of glory as the land of freedom, robbed 
that country of her crown of glory as the land of 
love and liberty and peace, and to the extent of their 
ability and to the extent of their opportunities made 
that country the seat and center of a soulless, con- 
scienceless, remorseless, blood-stained military des- 
potism. 

But infamous as were the acts of the American 
Congress in 1898, their criminality fades into spotless 
innocence when compared with the wickedness of 



Iniquity in High Places 18^ 

William McKinley. In behalf of the Congressman, 
it may be urged that he is compelled to vote "Aye" on 
any and every proposition to declare war against any 
nation on earth, and that, too, without regard to the 
merits or necessities of the case. The shedding of 
human blood is the chiefest delight of the human 
animal. The shedding of human blood is a most en- 
trancing, most fascinating, most intoxicating delight 
to the whole human race, and the human race will 
resent any interference with the gratification of their 
tigerish instincts. Whenever, therefore, a proposi- 
tion to declare war against any nation is sure to be 
sustained by a majority in Congress, every member of 
Congress must hasten to fall into line and act with 
the majority or his public career closes then and there 
forever. The Congressman must end his political life, 
or he must engage in the wholesale murder of thou- 
sands of his innocent fellow-beings. 

But the President of the United States should be 
confronted with no such dilemma. *The President of 
the United States should be exposed to no such 
temptation. The President of the United States 
should be sheltered behind battlements that are im- 
pregnable and impervious to the onset of any and all 
forms of political chicanery and political intrigue 
and political villainy. And this consummation so de- 
voutly to be wished is at all times within reach of the 
American people. To the Constitution of the United 
States as it now reads let there be added a single line 
declaring that no person should hold the office of 



184 Iniquity in High Places 

President for more than one term, and the nation 
would be delivered from all danger of a repetition of 
the horrible crime committed by William McKinley 
in '1898. Add this brief amendment to the National 
Constitution, and the President will become a freed- 
man who is free indeed. He will be delivered from 
the yoke of party obligation and party domination. 
He will be delivered from the yoke of further political 
aspiration. He will be emancipated from the struggles 
and trials and temptations that dog the footsteps of 
the average man in all the ordinary and all the ex- 
traordinary paths of life. He will be released from 
bondage to his own greed, to his own selfishness, to 
his own cupidity, to his own depravity. He can no 
longer hope to add years to his tenure of office by the 
commission of the most horrible crimes. As he can 
not by plunging his country into a most iniquitous and 
most unnecessary war add one minute to the duration 
of his term of office he will consider such war-making 
a useless and profitless piece of political strategy. He 
will reach such conclusion, and act on such conclusion, 
even though in regard to the wholesale slaughter of 
hecatombs of his innocent fellow-beings he may have 
no more compunctions of conscience than had Wil- 
liam McKinley. 

If in 1898 the Constitution of the United States 
had contained a provision limiting the occupancy of 
the executive chair of the nation to but one term to 
any one person there would have been no Spanish 
war. Under such a constitutional provision, Wil- 



Iniquity in High Places 185 

Ham McKinley would not have made that cowardly, 
brutal, piratical attack upon a poor old dying nation. 
In 1898 the grand object of William McKinley was 
to secure his re-election to the presidency. To the 
accomplishment of that object all his heart and soul 
and life and strength were devoted. With him the 
desire for re-election was an all-absorbing, all-con- 
trolling, all-devouring, all-consuming passion. It in- 
spired his emotions ; it monopolized his thought ; it 
gave form and shape to all his schemes ; it drove him 
to his deeds of blood. William McKinley made that 
wicked war upon Spain simply and solely for the pur- 
pose of securing his own re-election to the presidency 
of the United States. He believed that by means of 
such a war he would achieve a prestige, a prominence, 
a glory, a renown that would render his re-election 
absolutely sure. He believed that if he dipped his 
hands in blood he would become a more acceptable 
and popular candidate. And he was correct in these 
views. 

"A successful murderer at the head of a nation is 
invariably crowned with laurels by a brutish popu- 
lace and smeared with benedictions by a truckling 
church." 

Every human being who perished in the wars of 
1898 and subsequent years — every human being, 
whether American or Spanish or Filipino, whether 
man, woman or child who perished in these wars, 
was murdered by William McKinley in order to se- 
cure his re-election to the presidency of the United 



1 86 Iniquity in High Places 

States. The attack made by the United States upon 
Spain in 1898 was a most infamous and wicked war 
of aggression. It was inspired by the basest and 
vilest motives that ever swayed the human heart and 
the human soul. Of course, the claim was made that 
the United States was compelled to interfere in the 
affairs of Cuba on the score of humanity. The claim 
was made that Cuba was suffering under such evils 
and miseries and horrors that armed intervention on 
the part of the American Government was not only 
entirely justifiable, but was absolutely necessary in 
the discharge of plain and obvious duty. 

We deny the claim. When was it established as a 
principle of international law that any one nation has 
a right to dictate to another nation in regard to the 
management of its internal affairs ? When was it es- 
tablished as a principle of international law that any 
one nation has a right to make war upon and subju- 
gate another nation on the ground of alleged misnr-n- 
c'.gement in the internal affairs of the latter? Under 
such false principles and false pretexts, Russia might 
allege that there was mismanagement in the internal 
affairs of Sweden and Norway, and she might accord- 
ingly proceed to subjugate these petty nationalities 
and annex their territory to her broad domains. Ger- 
many might allege that there was mismanagement in 
the internal affairs of Denmark and Holland, and she 
might accordingly conquer these countries and hold 
them in permanent subjection. France might pursue 
the same policy in regard to Belgium. Each of these 



Iniquity in High Places 187 

nations, in pursuing such a course, would simply be 
patterning after the wickedness of the United States 
in her dealings with Spain. The United States con- 
quered Spain and robbed her of her possessions in 
Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands, and then had 
the impudence to stand before the world and boast 
of these deeds as a glorious manifestation of genuine 
Christian philanthropy. 

But it is to be observed that this particular type of 
Christian philanthropy is manifested only toward those 
nations that are too weak to resist its application to 
their case. Strong nations, it would seem, require 
the exercise of a different kind of Christian philan- 
thropy. Thus, Russia, though now paralyzed by in- 
ternal strife, is among the mightiest of nations. With- 
in the borders of Russia during this present year 
(1906), there have been most horrible massacres of 
men, women and children ; and yet from no portion 
of the area of this great American republic has there 
been heard the faintest breath of a suggestion that 
armed American intervention in Russian affairs is the 
proper order of the day. On the contrary, our Ameri- 
can officials virtually and practically decline even to 
speak to Russia, much less to attack her. The fol- 
lowing telegrams explain themselves : 

"New York, June 20, 1906. — A telegram from 
President Roosevelt relative to the recent massacres 
of Jews in Russia was read to-night at a mass meet- 
ing of Jews in this city. In it the President said : 

"I shall go over the matter with Secretary Root. 



1 88 Iniquity in High Places 

You know how deeply we sympathize with your feel- 
ings, and how shocked and horrified we are at what 
has occurred in Russia, but you know also how well- 
nigh impossible it is to accomplish anything but harm 
by interference. 

(Signed) Theodore Roosevelt." 



Washington, June 21, 1906. — Secretary Root is 
giving consideration to the Jewish massacres in Rus- 
sia, having already discussed the subject with the 
President. So far he has taken no action. The prop- 
osition to interfere in the internal affairs of another 
country is fraught with such difficulty that the United 
States must move with the utmost caution and delicacy 
in making any advances to the Russian Government 
for an appeal in behalf of the Jews. 

Please observe the timidity of these American offi- 
cials in the presence of the Russian giant. They say 
that interference in the internal affairs of another 
country is fraught with difficulty. They say that the 
United States must move with the utmost caution and 
delicacy in speaking to Russia in regard to the mas- 
sacre of the Jews. This language really means that 
they do not intend to say anything to Russia at all. 
We are aided in reaching this interpretation by the af- 
fair at Kishineff, which occurred some years previous 
to 1906. The world was shocked by the Kishineff 
massacre, which was a most horrible exhibition of 
human savagery. Thousands and tens of thousands 



Iniquity in High Places 189 

and possibly hundreds of thousands of American citi- 
zens signed a petition addressed to the Czar of Russia 
and requesting' him to make adequate provision for 
protecting the lives and property of his Jewish sub- 
jects. The document was placed in the hands of the 
officials of the American Government at Washington 
with the request that it be transmitted to the Ameri- 
can embassador to Russia and by him delivered to the 
Czar. But the document never reached its destina- 
tion. Instead of stepping forward promptly and man- 
fully and independently and conveying the petition to 
the Czar's palace, regardless of all question as to 
whether its contents were or were not distasteful to 
the Russian autocrat, the American Government sent 
a private messenger to inquire humbly if the petition 
would be received. Upp'n obtaining information to the 
effect that the petition would not be received the 
American Government returned it to its signers. 

Here we have a most notable exhibition of official 
cowardice, or a most notable exhibition of tender- 
hearted regard for the feelings of other nations, pro- 
vided they are strong nations. If the American offi- 
cials were so anxious to avoid wounding the sensi- 
bilities of. the Russian potentate, why could they not 
have exhibited some faint trace of respect for the feel- 
ings of Spain ? And yet we know, as a matter of 
fact, that in 1898 the American Satanic Press was fill- 
ing the atmosphere of the American heavens with the 
foulest falsehood and denunciation and abuse of 
Spain. We know that the American Satanic Press 



190 Iniquity in High Places 

was incessantly demanding an attack upon Spain. We 
here give another specimen of their headlines : 

(From the Satanic Press, March 5, 1S98.) 

THE AMERICAN ELEET SHOULD NOW BE 
AT HAVANA. 



It Could Capture and Hold Havana Against the 
Spanish. 



American Naval Men Eager to Fight. 



THEY HAVE VAST HOPES THAT THERE WILL SOON BE A 
CONFLICT. 

There can be no mistake as to the meaning of this 
language. It not only calls for war with Spain, but 
it calls for an immediate attack upon Spain, without 
waiting for the formality of a declaration of war. 
Language of this kind dinned incessantly into the ears 
of the people of any country on earth will not only 
create the impression that war is unavoidable, but it 
will also create the impression that war is most desir 
able and just. And yet it would seem that the offi- 
cials of the American Government who are so fearful 
of wounding the feelings of Russia made no objection 
whatever to the action of the Satanic Press in pouring 
out a torrent of the coarsest insult and coarsest vitu- 
peration upon Spain. 

But what was the duty of the American Executive 
at the period when the American Satanic Press was 



Iniquity in High Places 191 

endeavoring to nurse the Spanish war movement into 
active and vigorous and villainous life? There can 
be no question and no doubt as to the nature of the 
motives that should prompt and inspire every ruler 
on earth, high or low, in the discharge of the duties 
that devolve upon him. A true and faithful record of 
the official life of every ruler on earth should exhibit 
nothing but the manifestation of the most benevolent 
impulses coupled and crowned with earnest and un- 
ceasing efforts for the achievement of the most 
beneficent deeds. A true ruler is the loving friend of 
all mankind. A true ruler is the loved and trusted 
friend of all mankind. A true ruler is a life-lasting 
model and exemplar of self- forgetf illness and self- 
sacrifice. When the life-work of the ruler is finished 
and he has passed from the scenes of earth, his name 
and fame should be such that all nations and all 
peoples would mourn him as a benefactor of the 
human race. The true ruler should be a most en- 
thusiastic and untiring coworker with all the elements 
in society that are seeking and striving for human im- 
provement and human elevation. In the grand march 
of human progress the true ruler should ever be found 
in the van. The ruler should be part and parcel of 
every movement looking to the betterment of the con- 
ditions of life among the great masses of the people 
in every quarter of the globe. 

The duty of the ruler is to upbuild and strengthen 
and encourage the weak, to purify and ennoble the 
strong, to guard and protect the innocent and the help- 



192 Iniquity in High Places 

less, to reclaim and remold and reform the vicious, to 
guide the steps of the young in the paths of wisdom 
and virtue, to shield the declining years of the aged 
from wanton injury or cruel neglect, to minimize 
human griefs and sorrows and woes, and to increase 
and magnify the sum total of human prosperity and 
human happiness. 

But the highest, holiest, most sacred of all duties 
resting upon every ruler is to preserve his country's 
peace, and to labor for the establishment and main- 
tenance of universal and eternal peace throughout the 
world. The ruler should ever be on the watch and on 
guard against any possible outbreak of that omnipo- 
tent and omnipresent thirst for blood which is the 
common inheritance of all human beings, handed 
down to them through millions and millions of years 
from the period when their ancestors were no better 
than so many crawling reptiles. Whenever and wher- 
ever in any part of the world there is apparent dan- 
ger of irritation between any two countries or two 
nations, all the rulers of the earth should come to the 
rescue and endeavor to avert any catastrophe. They 
should proffer their services for the purpose of ef- 
fecting a peaceful settlement. They should urge the 
parties to the controversy to refer their difficulties 
to arbitration. They should urge the parties to 
submit their case to The Hague Court. They 
should advise the calling of a World's Congress, or- 
ganized after the manner we have already described 
in these pages. And the true ruler, the truly wise and 



Iniquity in High Places 193 

truly good ruler, will advocate a reduction in the ar- 
maments of all the nations ; and he will advocate the 
continuance of such reduction until the number of 
men left in the military service shall not exceed a 
specified and insignificant percentage of the total pop- 
ulation of a country — a percentage no greater than 
may he needed for police purposes. And the truly 
wise and truly good ruler will abhor all wars of ag- 
gression, all wars of conquest, all wars for territorial 
aggrandizement. 

But we repeat our question. What was the duty 
of the American executive at the period when the 
American Satanic Press and the American Congres- 
sional Demagogues were engaged in concocting and 
carrying out a conspiracy to plunge the country into 
the wickedest, most infamous of wars? 

To this interrogatory there can he but one answer. 
The President of the United States should have ex- 
hibited the most determined and the most unflinching 
opposition to such national infamy. He should have 
devoted all his energies to the task of saving the coun- 
try from such sin and shame. The war upon Spain 
was a most infamous and wicked war of aggression. 
It was a most brutal and cowardly attack upon a fee- 
ble, decaying, unoffending, defenseless and friendly 
nation. It was high-handed piracy, hypocritically 
cloaked in a mantle of pretended charity and pre- 
tended sanctity. It was a horrible outbreak of that 
most beastly of all human tastes — namely, a taste for 
human eore — a taste that was ingrained and inter- 



194 Iniquity in High Places 

woven into the very nature of man during the count- 
less ages of incessant and deadly conflict that attended 
his evolution from the lower forms of animal life. It 
was an abandonment of the hopes and aspirations of 
our modern civilization and a retrogression to the 
period when the world was dominated by the brutal 
and beastly orgies of the barbarian, the savage, the 
cannibal. Stripped of all shams and pretexts and dis- 
guises it stands out in all its naked iniquity as the 
crowning crime of the century. The President should 
have grappled with this issue without a moment's 
delay. He should have wasted no time in ceremony. 
He should have ignored all the rules of etiquette. He 
should have thrown conventionalities to the winds. 
He should have sprung into the public arena and 
poured forth a torrent of the fiercest denunciation 
upon this villainous scheme to drag this country into 
a wicked and cowardly war. He should have trav- 
ersed the length and breadth of the land in all direc- 
tions and made every forum echo with utterances 
whose purport could not be misunderstood. 

And the President, at this crisis, should have thrown 
into the scale all his tremendous and resistless official 
influence. The President of the United States is the 
mightiest of all earthly potentates. In his presence 
kings and emperors and czars and kaisers stand with 
bared heads and bowed forms. He is the life and 
soul of all America and all Americans. He is the 
Western Continent compressed and condensed into 
one personality, one individuality. In his every pul- 



Iniquity in High Places 195 

sation the heart of the nation heats. In his every 
breath the lungs of the nation expand. In his every 
word the voice of the nation resounds. In these latter 
days the test of the patriotism of the American citizen 
is found in the degree of servility with which he up- 
holds and indorses presidential usurpations of power. 
And presidential usurpation of power is a striking- 
growth and development in the political history of this 
nation for the past hundred years. A hundred or 
more years ago this American nation was but a hand- 
ful of people making no claim to wealth or power or 
influence in the affairs of the world. But to-day 
America is the greatest, the richest, the most powerful 
of the nations that now exist, or that ever have existed 
on the face of the earth since time was. But wonder- 
ful beyond belief as has been the growth of these 
United States in wealth and population, that growth 
has been more than outstripped by the rapidity with 
which the limited constitutional authority of the Pres- 
ident has been transmuted into practical absolutism. 

And the vast amount of political patronage which 
lies at the disposal of the President has been a most 
potent factor in converting him into an absolute mon- 
arch. Every person in the employ of the United 
States government practically holds his position at the 
will of the President. Every one in the military ser- 
vice, or in the naval service, or in any of the various 
departments of the civil service, steps in or out at the 
nod and beck of the President. In making this vast 
number of appointments the President must neces- 



196 Iniquity in High Places 

sarily have intermediaries. And when a person is a 
candidate for appointment to a government office, the 
most natural and most effective intermediary to ren- 
der assistance in securing such appointment is the 
member of Congress from the Congressional district 
in which the candidate lives. Every congressman 
therefore has behind him in his home district a horde 
of hungry office-seekers who depend upon him to se- 
cure for them a share of the public spoils. There are 
multitudes of persons who want to be postmasters or 
postoffice clerks or postal railway clerks. There are 
persons who want to be United States marshals or 
deputy United States marshals. There are persons 
who want to be clerks or district attorneys in Federal 
courts. There are persons who want to be govern- 
ment surveyors or land agents, or clerks in govern- 
ment land offices. There are persons who want to be 
internal revenue collectors. There are persons who 
want to be collectors of customs, or appraisers or 
clerks or laborers in the government custom house. 

Of course, if the congressman belongs to the politi- 
cal party which is opposed to the President he will 
not be embarrassed by many applications for appoint- 
ment to office. But if he belongs to the President's 
party he is between the devil and the deep, deep sea. 
Behind him is a clamorous crowd of politicians who 
demand reward for the services they have rendered 
him, and who may repudiate him in the next political 
campaign if he fails to bring home a full quota of 
presidential appointments. Confronting him is the 



Iniquity in High Places 197 

President himself in force. The President will not 
deal out or dole out patronage to any congressman 
who does not support what is termed the "presidential 
policy." and who does not vote for any and every pet 
measure which the President directs his tools to in- 
troduce into the halls of legislation. The congressman 
surrenders at discretion and takes the Presidential 
yoke upon his neck and assists in speeding the progress 
of the presidential car toward the goal of absolute 
imperialism. An incident that occured a few years 
ago illustrates the present position of the President. 
The erratic individual who occupies the imperial throne 
of Germany was addressing a number of raw recruits 
who had recently been gathered into his army. Among 
other thing's he said : 

"Repeat the Lord's prayer every day. and remember 
that I am your Lord." 

Some one in commenting on this singular language 
of the Kaiser remarked : 

"The Emperor of Germany does not seem to under- 
stand his true position in the world. He seems to 
think that he is President of the United States, stand- 
ing behind the pie-counter and talking to a line of Con- 
gressmen who are coming up, one after another, to 
beg* a tit-bit for a constituent.'" 

This condition of affairs should be regarded by the 
American people with extreme disfavor. The presi- 
dential usurpation of power is an abnormal growth 
upon the body politic, which requires heroic surgery 
for its removal. We need drastic constitutional 



198 Iniquity in High Places 

amendments that will strip the President of ninety- 
nine per cent of his executive power and vest that 
power in various executive committees elected by Con- 
gress from its own membership and liable to dismissal 
at any time, very much after the manner in which 
the English Parliament disposes of an inefficient or 
unpopular administration. Such a reform would make 
Congress the governing power of the country. The 
individual congressman would be afforded an oppor- 
tunity to become a free and independent man. The 
individual congressman could no longer be inven- 
toried as a chattel among the personal effects of the 
incumbent of the executive chair. 

But while the assumption of absolute power by the 
President is the prevailing and popular fashion, it is 
highly desirable that that power should be exercised 
for the country's good and for the world's good. In 
1898 the President should have not only appealed to 
the masses of the American people, but he should have 
addressed himself to the individual Congressman and 
urged the rejection of any line of policy or line of ac- 
tion that threatened to breed national animosities and 
terminate in bloodshed. Most especially should he 
have emptied the vials of his wrath upon the heads of 
the infamous demagogues on the floor of Congress, 
who had become coworkers and "pals" of the man- 
agers of the Satanic Press in the commission of the 
great crime of plunging the country into the wicked- 
est of wars. These enemies of God and man should 
have been so lashed and scourged that they would 



Iniquity in High Places 199 

have slunk from the presence of the imperial chief 
magistrate in utter and speechless consternation. 

There cannot be a shadow of a doubt that if the 
President in 1898 had taken the vigorous course we 
have here suggested he would have succeeded in sav- 
ing the country from entering upon a career of the 
most shameful and disgracful criminality. He would 
have succeeded in gathering around him a host of fol- 
lowers who do not believe that love and friendship, 
human or divine, are blessed and consecrated and 
sanctified by wanton bloodshed. He would have 
gathered a host of followers who do not believe that 
if the atmosphere that envelopes this globe be filled 
with the smoke of burning human habitations and with 
the odor of unburied human remains that thereby the 
kingdom of heaven is brought down and established 
upon earth. The President, by such a course, would 
have promptly and most effectually checkmated the 
schemes of the managers of the American Satanic 
Press. 

Veto Message. 

But suppose that despite the all-powerful official 
influence of the President, the American Congress 
should have persisted in its nefarious designs and 
should have passed a bill or resolution declaring war 
against poor, old, dying Spain. The President should 
have promptly interposed a veto, which should have* 
been worded about in this wise : 



200 Iniquity in High Places 

"To the Congress of the United States: 

"I hereby return to you, without my approval, your 
" resolution declaring war against Spain. War is 
" legalized murder. War is the most horrible calatu- 
" itv that can befall mankind. War is the connecting 
" tie that binds the human race to beasthood and 
" beastdom. War precipitates a social and moral con- 
" vulsion in which all the nobler impulses of human 
" nature are benumbed and paralyzed, all the active 
" and kindly sympathies are supplanted by relentless 
" hate, and all the vicious, brutal bloody instincts of 
" the human race are given free rein and full license 
" to revel and riot in a career of destruction and death. 

"The wickedest deed that can be perpetrated on the 
" face of this earth is the inauguration of an unneces- 
" sary war. Nations and rulers that send forth armies 
" and navies to ravage any portion of the earth's sur- 
" face with fire and sword assume a fearful responsi- 
" bility. A nation has no more right to wilfully and 
" deliberately take the life of an innocent person be- 
" longing to another nation than a private citizen has 
" to take the life of an innocent neighbor. Nations, in 
" their dealings with each other, should be governed 
" by precisely the same moral obligations as are uni- 
" versallv recognized as binding upon individuals in 
" their mutual affairs. A nation has no more right to 
" commit murder than an individual has a right to 
" commit murder. 

"Self-defense is the only plea that can be urged in 
" justification of the act of a man in taking the life 



Iniquity in High Places 201 

" of another person. If a man is feloniously assailed 
" by a person or persons who are armed with deadly 
" weapons and who are intent upon instantly taking 
" his life he may kill any and all such assailants. If 
" a man's watch or purse or horse or other portable 
" property be seized by a thief or robber, the man 
" may lay violent hands on such thief or robber and 
" compel a restitution of the property, and if a struggle 
" should ensue and the thief or robber should be 
"' killed, the man would be held to be justified in the 
" eye of the law. A man may defend his life, his per- 
" son, his family, his property against all felonious 
" attacks. 

"And the same inexorable law applies to the affairs 
" of nations. A nation has no right to take the life 
" of a person belonging to another nation except in 
" self-defense. A nation has no right to fire a single 
" hostile shot against another nation except in self- 
" defense. In the light of this simple principle, this 
" indisputable principle, the character of the proposed 
" war upon Spain becomes apparent. It is shown at 
" once that the proposed war would be a deed of the 
" grossest wickedness. Spain has never made any 
" attack upon the United States. Spain has never 
" evinced any desire or design to attack the United 
" States. Spain has at all times exhibited an entirely 
" friendly spirit toward the United States. Notwith- 
•' standing the fact that a licentious, mendacious and 
" utterly venal and corrupt American press has del- 
" uQ-ed the face of the continent with an ocean of 



202 Iniquity in High Places 

" falsehood in regard to Spanish and Cuban affairs, 
"nevertheless Spain has always treated Ihe American 
" Government with the most respectful courtesy. 
" Among all the nations of the earth that have had 
" dealings with the United States, none have been 
" more agreeable or courteous or compliant than 
" Spain. In view of these facts, there is absolutely no 
" excuse whatever for war upon Spain. 

"Furthermore, no justification for war upon Spain 
" can be found in the fact that she has been for some 
" time engaged in a struggle with the so-called Cuban 
" insurgents. In all lands and in all ages of the 
" world every government is presumed to have the 
" right to maintain its authority over every portion of 
" its territorial domains by force of arms if need be. 
" If the law of self-defense empowers a government to 
" repel attacks by a foreign foe the same law would 
"seem to. authorize a government to repel attacks by 
" a domestic foe. And least of all and last of all, 
" among the nations, should the United States criticize 
" or condemn the policy of Spain in attempting to sub- 
" jugate the Cuban rebels. From 1861 to 1865 the 
" Government of the United States had waged a 
" stupendous and deadly contest against the 
" Southern secessionists, who had rebelled and 
" defied the national authority. That struggle 
" cost a half million of human lives and 
" three thousand million dollars of public money, 
" in addition to the incalculable loss of private prop- 
" erty. Spain, in her dealings with the Cuban rebels, 



Iniquity in High Places 203 

" may be said to have patterned after the course pur- 
" sued by the United States in suppressing the rebel- 
" lion of 1861. 

"And the fact that the struggle between the Spanish 
" Government and the Cuban insurgents was attended 
" with unspeakable horrors does not authorize the 
" United States to declare war against Spain. It 
" should, however, authorize the combined nations of 
"the earth to -take action. The combined nations of 
" the earth, including the United States of America, 
" should have power to call a halt in all wars that are 
" in actual operation, and to call a halt in all prep- 
" araticns for a war that is threatened. The com- 
" bined nations should have power to call a world's 
" conference or a world's congress that should in- 
" vestigate the questions at issue between any two na- 
" tions, and should formulate and announce its con- 
" elusions. 

"The Spanish army is charged with laying waste 
" a large portion of the territory of Cuba. The Span- 
ish army is charged with driving Cuban people from 
their homes and gathering them around cities and 
towns, where they perished from starvation by thou- 
sands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thou- 
sands. But we must recollect that the laying waste 
of a country is a legitimate war measure, though a 
measure of such severity that the hardest-hearted 
commander should be extremely reluctant to en- 
force it. In the summer of 1864 General Grant is- 
sued repeated orders to General Phil Sheridan, 



204 Iniquity in High Places 

" directing him to lay waste the Shenandoah Valley. 
" At that time, in 1864, the war had been in operation 
" for three or four years. During all this time it was 
" known that Lee's rebel army at Richmond was re- 
" ceiving a large portion of its supplies from the 
" Shenandoah Valley. General Grant determined to 
" break tip this source of supplies. Cutting off an 
" enemy's supplies is legitimate warfare. A vessel 
" laden with food and supplies for the enemy may be 
" sunk or burned. A railroad train laden with sup- 
" lies for the enemy may be burned. A field of grain 
" sown for the purpose of furnishing food to the 
" enemy may be destroyed. General Grant ordered 
" General Sheridan to sweep through the Shenandoah 
" Valley, and to leave nothing behind him that might 
" 'induce the enemy to return.' Sheridan was ordered 
" to seize all men below fifty years of age and throw 
" them into a military prison. He was ordered to 
" carry off all crops and animals, and to destroy what 
" he could not carry off. General Grant said that if 
'* the war was to continue another year the Shenan- 
" cloah Valley must remain, to use his own language,- 
" 'a barren waste.' 

"General Sheridan subsequently declared that he 
"fully indorsed the policy of General Grant. General 
" Sheridan said that in the matter of achieving the 
" conquest of a country, shooting was not as effective 
" as starving. If a number of men were shot on the 
" battlefield other men might take their places, but if 
" a country was entirely stripped of all means of sub- 



Iniquity in High Places 205 

*' sistence, if misery and woe and hunger and starva- 
" tion and death rapped at the door of every house- 
" hold, then the people would throw down their guns 
" and plead for peace. 

"In passing" judgment upon the acts of the Spanish 
" in laying waste the soil of Cuba, consideration should 
" be given to the acts of Americans in laying waste the 
" soil of Virginia. 

"Happily, however, though all war has not yet dis- 
" appeared from the face of the earth, nevertheless 
" there are most encouraging indications that a settle- 
" ment of the struggle in Cuba will soon be reached. 
" The Spanish Government has ordered a cessation of 
"all war movements. and war operations. The Span- 
" ish Government has ordered that the collecting of 
" the country people around the cities and towns shall 
" cease. The Spanish Government has ordered that 
" the reconcentrados be permitted to return to their 
" homes. The Spanish Government has ordered an 
" appropriation of funds for the relief of the reconcen- 
" trades. The Spanish Government has ordered the 
" throwing open of all Cuban ports, and the admission 
" of all donations of food from the United States, free 
" of all tariff charges. The steamship lines from 
" Xew York to Cuba are carrying all donations of food 
" from the United States free of charge for freight. 
" The Cuban railroads are carrying all donations of 
" food throughout the entire length and breadth of the 
" island, also free of charge for freight. The Cuban 



206 Iniquity in High Places 

" railroads are also carrying all persons engaged in 
" distributing food free of charge for passage. 

"Cuba is now practically a land of peace and 
" plenty. 

"In my opinion, it would be worse than murder and 
" treason combined for the persons in control of the 
" Government of the United States to take any action 
" at this juncture that would paralyze and nullify and 
" destroy this blessed work of charitable relief. And 
" a declaration of war by the United States against 
" Spain would completely wipe out and obliterate 
" every trace of this noble charity. Not another 
" pound of food could leave New York to go to Cuba. 
"' Not another pound of food would be allowed to en- 
" ter the island of Cuba so long as the American war 
" vessels were maintaining a blockade. The starva- 
" tion, which American charity has completely ban- 
" ished from Cuba, would return in aggravated and 
" intensified form. The daily death-roll of the victims 
" of the famine would be swelled beyond all prece- 
" dent, and the murder of everyone of these victims 
" would be directly traceable to the Goevrnment of the 
" United States. I cannot for an instant consent to 
" become a participant in the fathomless iniquity, the 
" horrible wickedness, of plunging this nation into an 
" unnecessary and uncalled-for war. I cannot for an 
" instant consent to become a participant to the fiend- 
" ish cruelty of starving to death thousands and tens 
" of thousands of helpless Cuban women and children 
" by dashing from their lips the food which a noble 



Iniquity in High Places 207 

" American charity has so fully and freely and gen- 
" eronsly extended to them. 

(Not Signed) "WILLIAM McKINLEY." 

It is hardly necessary to say that no one would ac- 
cuse William McKinley of having any disposition to 
sign such a document as the proposed veto message 
we have here given. No one who takes the correct 
moral measure of the man would accuse him of having 
conscience enough to cherish such sentiments, or cour- 
age enough to avow such sentiments even if he appre- 
ciated their truth. And William McKinley was not 
seeking for the truth. He was not seeking for the 
right. He was not seeking for the path of duty. He 
was seeking for ways and means to advance the in- 
terests of William McKinley, and in order to accom- 
plish this object he was prepared to shed any amount 
of human blood, and to inflict any amount of misery 
and suffering and woe upon the human race. 

William McKinley, of course, well understood that 
in view of the natural bloodthirstiness of the human 
species any ruler who should oppose a prospective war 
would be liable to be branded as a traitor to his coun- 
try. But he was not fully assured that the advocacy 
of war would render him master of the political situa- 
tion. He was not positive that the infamous false- 
hoods poured out by the Satanic Press had affected 
the public mind to a degree that would warrant him in 
taking stock in a war movement as a paying political 
investment. Therefore, in the opening months of 



208 Iniquity in High Places 

1898, William McKinley was a pitiable creature, a pit- 
iable object or rather a pitiable subject of indecision 
and incertitude. Having no fundamental moral prin- 
ciple on "which to base his action, having even no rudi- 
mentary moral principle, he was hopelessly and help- 
lessly drifting- hither and thither, responsive to every 
current, to every eddy, to every breeze. But at that 
juncture the country needed men, and not driftwood, 
in high places. If William McKinley had been a man 
and not a self-seeking, time-serving, groveling and 
unscrupulous politician, if he had been a man among 
men, if he had been a man of any principle, of any con- 
science, of any character, of any courage, of any firm- 
ness, of any will, of any determination, he would have 
made an overwhelming and crushing attack upon the 
villainous hordes that were striving to involve the 
country in the wickedest of wars. He would have 
throttled every one of the crawling serpents in the 
nests of vipers that found lodgment and domicile in 
the offices of the managers of the Satanic Press. O 
for one hour of the sternness of Old Hickory ! O for 
a passing gleam of the goodness of Old Abe ! 

With the lapse of time and the apparent growth of 
the war feeling, William McKinley gradually changed 
his position, and at last enlisted under the black flag 
of the managers of the Satanic Press and became their 
menial and tool. In the opening of 1898 William 
McKinley appeared before the world a weak, vacillat- 
ing, cowering wretch, halting between the dictates of 
duty and the demands of a howling menagerie of 



Iniquity in High Places 209 

hyenas composed of the incarnate diaboloi of the 
American Press and the incarnadined Robespierres of 
the American Congress. In the opening of 1899 he 
appeared as an insatiate, bloodsucking vampire, pan- 
dering to the vile passions of the beastly rabble, and 
playing the part of procurer of victims for sacrifice on 
the altar of the Moloch of war. 

The responsibility for inaugurating that wickedest 
of wars upon Spain rests with more crushing weight 
on William McKinley than it does on any other man, 
and we might say than it does on all other men. He 
was the one man, and the only man in the world, who 
could have prevented that war after it had passed the 
early stages of its development. And yet he never 
lifted a finger in behalf of peace. He never uttered 
a syllable in behalf of peace. On the contrary, he ren- 
dered material assistance to the piratical forces that 
were conspiring to plunge the country into war. He 
finally sent a message to Congress urging a declara- 
tor, of war against Spain. William McKinley vir- 
tually made that war. He virtually declared that war. 
He is responsible for every drop of blood shed in that 
iniquitous contest. He is responsible for every death 
on the battlefield. He is responsible for every death 
in hospitals from diseases acquired in unhealthy tropi- 
cal climates. He is responsible for all the horrors 
and miseries and sufferings that in a thousand varying 
forms accompany active warfare. He is responsible 
for the cruelties, the brutalities, the vices and lawless 
crimes that follow in the wake of advancing armies. 



210 Iniquity in High Places 

But we make a special and definite charge against 
this greatest of criminals. We accuse William Mc- 
Kinley of murdering by starvation one hundred thou- 
sand Cuban men, women and children in order to 
make himself President of the United States for a 
second term. We have already stated the fact that 
Cuba was practically a land of peace and plenty at the 
time when William McKinley commenced that war 
upon Spain. The Spanish Government had stopped 
the war against the Cuban insurgents, and the starva- 
tion had disappeared by reason of the donations of 
food from the people of the United States. Clara 
Barton, the president of the American Red Cross So- 
ciety, had "gone to Havana and made that city the 
headquarters for the distribution of food. She re- 
ceived earnest co-operation and assistance from all 
parties. William McKinley himself, in his message 
to Congress on April 11, 1898, admits the efficiency of 
the Red Cross service in the following words : 

"Nearly two hundred thousand dollars in money 
" and supplies has already reached the sufferers, and 
" more is forthcoming. The supplies are admitted 
" duty free and transportation to the interior has been 
" arranged, so that the relief, at first necessarily con- 
" fined to Havana and the larger cities, is now ex- 
" tended through most, if not all, of the towns where 
" suffering exists. Thousands of lives have already 
" been saved." 

Never did criminal make a clearer confession of 
guilt. If, as William McKinley savs, thousands of 



Iniquity in High Places 211 

lives were saved by the contributions of food from the 
people of the United States through the agency of 
Clara Barton and the Red Cross Society, then the mo- 
ment that William McKinley commenced war upon 
Spain and thereby cut off all further charitable sup- 
plies, those same thousands of lives were immediately 
imperiled, and those same thousands of lives were 
ultimately lost. Every human being, whose life had 
been saved by Clara Barton, was subsequently mur- 
dered by William McKinley in order to make himself 
President of the United States for a second term. 

This is not a mere surmise on our part. It is a con- 
clusion immovably based on solid fact. War was de- 
clared in April, 1S9S. The American forces did not 
reach Havana till December, 1898. During the eight 
months that intervened between these two dates not a 
single mouthful of food from the United States could 
reach Havana. The American war vessels patrolling 
the coast of Cuba commanded the entrance to Havana 
harbor, and the Spanish forts and the Spanish garri- 
son commanded the harbor itself. All the steamship 
lines that had previously carried freight and pas- 
sengers between Cuba and the United States were of 
course withdrawn, and there was absolutely no com- 
munication or means of communication between the 
two countries. It was the natural and inevitable con- 
sequence of this condition of affairs that the starva- 
tion prevailing in Havana and vicinity was rendered 
vastly more frightful and destructive than was ever 
before known. And we have the evidence of this 



212 Iniquity in High Places 

fact. After the occupation of Havana by the Ameri- 
can forces in December, 1898, the Red Cross Society 
sent an agent to Cuba to ascertain the condition of the 
suffering people. This agent was Colonel R. J. Hinton. 
an experienced journalist, who had been editor of the 
San Francisco Post for a number of years. Colonel 
■Hinton investigated the condition of affairs and made 
a report, which was published in the New York Voice. 
We quote one sentence : 

"It is the opinion of Cubans, of liberal Spaniards, 
" and of resident Americans, that the American dec- 
" laration of war against Spain and the operations 
" under that declaration have increased and marked 
" Cuban starvation and pestilence between April, 1898, 
" and December, 1898, by deaths of at least 100,000 
" persons, mostly women and children." 

Who murdered that extra one hundred thousand 
helpless Cuban people, mostly women and children? 
To this query there can be but one answer. William 
McKinley was the murderer. If William McKinley 
had the slightest spark of human feeling, of human 
sympathy, of human sensibilities, the moment he saw 
the great success of the Red Cross operations in Cuba 
he would have sent a message to Congress. It would 
not have been a message requesting Congress to de- 
clare war against Spain. It would have been a mes- 
sage requesting Congress to make an appropriation of 
funds to enable the Red Cross Society to carry on its 
blessed work to the point of completion. Clara Bar- 
ton had said that fifteen thousand dollars per week 



Iniquity in High Places 213 

would feed the starving" Cubans, though thirty thou- 
sand per week would be a preferable sum. Why 
could not William McKinley have requested Congress 
to make an appropriation large enough to enable the 
Secretary of the Treasury to put into the hands of the 
Red Cross Society the sum of thirty thousand dollars 
per week for the period of a full year, if aid were 
needed for that length of time? But there is a still 
graver question to be asked. Why could not William 
McKinley, in sending to Congress such message re- 
questing an appropriation to enable the Red Cross So- 
ciety to save the lives of the starving Cubans, have 
remarked that not only would the Cubans thereby be 
put in a comfortable condition but that all trace of ir- 
ritation or ill-feeling between the United States and 
Spain would be removed and the ancient friendship 
that had always subsisted between the two nations 
would be re-established? Why could not William 
McKinley have uttered this simple sentence? Why 
could he not have dropped an incidental syllable in 
favor of peace on earth and good-will to men ? Be- 
cause he would not have dared to do it. A noble, up- 
right and fearless statesman belonging to any nation 
on earth would ever be on the alert to preserve his 
country's peace and to preserve the world's peace, and 
beyond this he would ever be on the alert to assist in 
the introduction of the glorious era when all difficulties 
between nations shall be settled by arbitration, and wa^ 
shall be known no more forever. But William Mc- 
Kinley was not that kind of a man. He did not con- 



214 Iniquity in High Places 

cern himself in the slightest degree in regard to the 
future welfare and future happiness of the human 
race. His whole heart and soul were wrapped up in 
his selfish schemes for the increase and perpetuation of 
his political power. He had become the menial and 
tool of the Satanic Press. He may be said to have 
entered into an implied compact with the jingo element 
of the nation whereby he was to afford them an op- 
portunity to- shed innocent human blood, and in return 
therefor was to receive their votes for his re-election. 
He dare not breathe a syllable in favor of peace, for 
fear of losing these votes. And yet this trimming, 
shuffling, weak-kneed and utterly worthless politician 
was the person into whose hands the destinies of this 
great republic had for the time being been placed ! 

William McKinley may be said to be the counterpart 
of the notorious Weyler. McKinley struck down the 
hand of charity. McKinley drove Clara Barton from 
her work of mercy. McKinley robbed the starving 
reconcentrado of his last morsel of food. McKinley 
supplemented and completed the work of death com- 
menced by Weyler. Weyler's bloody mantle rests on 
McKinley's shoulders. What Weyler did not kill Mc- 
Kinley did kill. Nay, in the matter of starvation the 
little finger of McKinley was thicker than the loins of 
Weyler. For Weyler did not forbid the importation 
of food ; but McKinley's war dogs, floating along the 
coast of Cuba, fastened their fangs in the throat of 
every man who would bring food to the starving 
people, either in charity or in traffic. The horrors of 




And the leading spirit in this carnival 
ot death raises his blood-dripping hand 
to an offended heaven and mocks Al- 
mighty God by returning thanks for t'^e 
success that crowned his damnable deeds. 
See page 215. 



Iniquity in High Places 215 

that blockade pass description. All business ceased. 
All industry ceased. All persons were discharged 
from employment. Prices of food doubled, trebled, 
quadrupled, increased ten-fold, and starvation reigned 
supreme. The angel of death spread his dark wing 
over the length and breadth of the ill-fated isle, and 
left the imprint of his skeleton hand on the doorpost of 
every household. In how many stricken homes did 
the wail of the starving infant grow feebler and 
feebler till hushed in the silence of death ! Over how 
many thresholds did the emaciated form totter forth, 
never to return ! On how many highways and by- 
ways were the vultures feeding on the corpses of the 
victims of McKinley's starvation and McKinley's war ! 
And the leading spirit in this carnival of death raises 
his blood-dripping hand to an offended heaven and 
mocks Almighty God by returning thanks for the suc- 
cess that has crowned his damnable deeds. 

But we desire to call attention to some of the in- 
cidental horrors, which illustrate the wickedness of 
the war that William McKinley inaugurated for the 
purpose of advancing his personal interests. It would 
seem that when the American forces were closing in 
upon the City of Santiago the people of the city were 
greatly alarmed. They possibly feared a bom- 
bardment. They became panic-stricken and rushed 
to the country. They took refuge on naked 
hillsides, miles away, where they were without food, 
where they were exposed to the fierce heat of the sun 
by day and to drenching thunder storms that raged 



216 Iniquity in High Places 

with great fury every night. Their condition may be 
inferred from the following telegram : 

"In Front of Santiago, 

July 8, 1898. 

"Refugees, many of them starving, although loaded 

" with jewels and money, are strung along the road 

" from Caney to Siboney. The bodies of four women, 

" apparently well to do, were found on the road to- 

" clay." 

■> 

If these four women lay down and died by the road- 
side, what must have been the sufferings of thousands 
of other women and children who encountered equally 
horrible hardships and escaped death by a narrow 
margin? But we give another dispatch: 

"New York, July 24, 1898.— A cable to the New 
" York World from Santiago says : There were fifty 
" funerals here yesterday of refugees, who died as a 
" result of the scarcity of food at El Caney." 

Who murdered these helpless people? There is 
but one answer to the question. William McKinley 
was the murderer. A picture was given us of a young 
mother among the Santiago refugees, rushing fran- 
tically to and fro, her hair waving wildly in the wind, 
begging in vain for milk, milk, milk, to save the life 
of the infant that was dying of starvation in her arms. 
And when the infant has drawn its last breath and 
the work of death is complete let some noble, whole- 
souled and devoted patriot take a sharp knife and 
make a deep cut around the head of the little victim. 



Iniquity in High Places 217 

Let him tear off the scalp, with its little tufts of soft, 
downy hair. Let him tan that scalp and take it to 
Washington and nail it to the walls of the Capitol as 
an everlasting memorial of the glorious vindication 
of the "honor" of the American flag. But who mur- 
dered that bahe ? 

We desire to call attention to the Maine affair. 
That incident is rightfully regarded as having a most 
potent if not decisive influence in plunging the country 
into a wicked war. And in probing this affair to its 
depths we shall find unmistakable outcroppings of that 
ineffable villainy which at that juncture permeated and 
possessed the souls of American officials. There was 
absolutely no occasion whatever for sending the Maine 
to Havana. There was no excuse and no justification 
for such an act. To an impartial, unprejudiced ob- 
server that act can not fail to appear as rash in the 
highest degree. Even if the act were prompted by 
honest motives, it was one of those blunders that are 
said to be worse than a crime. But the sending of the 
Maine to Havana was not prompted by honest mo- 
tives. It was a political expedient. It was an elec- 
tioneering dodge. William McKinley had gradually 
become convinced that the war feeling had been 
nursed and developed up to that point that it could 
not safely be ignored in his efforts to grasp further 
political power. He therefore sent the Maine to Ha- 
vana as a sop to the jingo element in the United States 
that was howling for an attack upon Spain. He sent 
the Maine to Havana to conciliate and currv favor 



2 1 8 Iniquity in High Places 

with the war element. He sent the Maine to Havana 
as a hint or an intimation that a still greater display 
of military and naval force might be considered as 
among the possibilities of the early future. But we 
will give the telegrams that appeared in the columns 
of the Satanic Press : 

(From the Satanic Press, January 25, 1898.) 

THE WARSHIP MAINE SENT TO HAVANA! 



McKinley Will Put His Navies and Armies in 
Motion. 



War Will Speedily Commence. 



AMERICAN VALOR WILL CRUSH SPANISH POWER IN THE 
WESTERN W^ORLD. 

"Washington, Jan. 25, 1898.— It was only after a 
conference with General Miles and Secretary Long 
that the President ordered the Maine sent to Ha- 
vana. General Miles assured the President that 
in event of war with Spain the plans call for a 
mobilization of 100,000 men, of whom 25,000 would 
be for Eastern post duty, and the balance for an 
army of invasion and occupation in Cuba. It is 
the opinion of military experts that 25,000 men can 
be put on board troopships in three weeks, and that 
a second corps of 25,000 men could follow in the 
succeeding ten days, leaving the balance to bring up 
the rear at an early date." 



Iniquity in High Places 219 

Tt needs no second perusal of this telegraphic dis- 
patch to enable the reader to fathom the iniquity of 
the men at Washington in whose hands the destinies 
of the nation were placed. The Maine was sent to 
Havana at the conclusion of an investigation as to the 
length of time that would be required for the Govern- 
ment of the United States to collect troops to com- 
mence fighting. The Maine was sent to Havana as 
the forerunner of speedily coming events. The 
Maine carried the shadow of death, the shadow of 
threatened war. 

This dispatch was, of course, sent from Washing- 
ton to every city and town on the continent and pub- 
lished in all the journals. Its effect could not be other- 
wise than most portentous. It could not fail to de- 
velop and stimulate and encourage a war feeling. 
Millions of people were convinced that war was about 
to come, and that their first and highest duty was to 
bow to the inevitable and render support to the prose- 
cution of the war. 

And William McKinley was the individual who gave 
this impetus and this stimulus to the war movement. 
In all the black record of William McKinley's official 
criminality, there is no blacker or wickeder deed than 
this gross betrayal and abandonment of his duties to 
his country — this gross betrayal and abandonment of 
his duties to mankind. As we have repeatedly af- 
firmed and reaffirmed, the highest and holiest duty 
resting upon the rulers of the world is to maintain 
the world's peace. In the furtherance of this sacred 



220 Iniquity in High Places 

object it is the duty of every individual ruler to care- 
fully and scrupulously refrain from any line of action 
or any form of expression that would needlessly and 
wantonly irritate or excite the people of any other 
country. And if among the unprincipled demagogues 
that are to be found in all lands there should be those 
who would seek to gain popularity or seek to gain a 
reputation for patriotism by slandering and traducing 
and reviling and denouncing the people of another 
country, the true ruler should frown down all such evil 
conduct and should call upon his people to brand that 
conduct with condemnation swift and strong. 

If, therefore, among his counselors, official or per- 
sonal, there should be any one reckless enough to urge 
the sending of a war vessel to Havana, it would have 
been the duty of William McKinley to promptly inter- 
pose a stern negative : 

"Never! Never!! NEVER!!! 

"Such action on the part of the American Govern- 
" ment would excite and alarm the Spanish with the 
" idea that they were about to become the victims of 
" wanton and lawless military aggression. It would 
" excite and encourage the vicious and unprincipled 
"jingo element in the population of the United States 
" with the hope that they are about to have an oppor- 
" tunity to gratify their thirst for human blood. It 
" would enable a licentious and mendacious public 
" press to stuff its colunms with a new crop of out- 
" rageous falsehoods. With the public mind in such a 
" state of ferment the most trifling matter might pro- 



Iniquity in High Places 221 

" voke a collision that would precipitate the whole, 
'• horrid, catastrophe of war. To send a warship to 
" Havana would be patterning after the foolhardiness 
" of Commander W. S. Schley, of the American war- 
" ship Baltimore, who, while in the harbor of Val- 
" paraiso, in 1891, allowed two boatloads of seamen to 
" go ashore in the face of a hostile populace, with the 
" result that in the twinkling of an eye the streets were 
" raging with bloodshed and death. It cannot be con- 
" ducive to the development and maintenance of friend- 
" ship between nations to make a parade of force 
" under the hollow pretense of official etiquette and 
" official ceremony. The true method of securing and 
" preserving friendship 'between nations is to respect 
" and protect each other's rights, to accord to each 
" other all friendly privileges, to extend to each other 
" prompt assistance and sympathy in the hour of dire 
" calamity, to exhibit due deference to each other in 
" the matter of national pride, of national custom, of 
" national peculiarity, of national hereditary prejudice. 
" Xo, sir, I will not send a war vessel to Havana !" 

But the real William McKinley did send the Maine 
to Havana, and from the wickedest of motives. He 
sent the Maine to Havana for the purpose of stirring 
up among the population of the United States that 
spirit of bloodthirstiness which is a hereditary and 
ineradicable trait in the constitution of the human 
animal. He sent the Maine to Havana to kindle and 
fan the flame of war, and thus induce the American 
people to rally under his political banner and render 



222 Iniquity in High Places 

him political support as the proper exponent of the 
new national doctrine of bloody, piratical conquest. 

Under the old common law of England, it was a 
maxim that a person who committed a felony was 
answerable for all the consequences of that felony, 
whether those consequences were or were not to be 
anticipated. Thus, if a person were to set fire to and 
burn a barn he would be guilty of arson, 
which is a felony. But if a tramp had previously 
crawled into that barn to sleep and were burned to 
death in the conflagration, then the incendiary would 
not only be guilty of arson but he would also be guilty 
of murder, even though he had no knowledge of the 
fact that there was a human being in the barn. Under 
that stern rule of the old common law, William Mc- 
Kinley was responsible for the death of every person 
who perished on the Maine in the harbor of Havana, 
for the reason that the Maine was sent on that fateful 
errand from the wickedest and most felonious of mo- 
tives. The bare act of sending the Maine was the 
blackest of felonies. 

But in the estimation of the great majority of 
people the world over, the most important question in 
connection with the Maine affair is this : 

"BY WHOM WAS THE MAINE DESTROYED?" 

To this question there has never been a satisfactory 
answer, and to all human appearances there never 
will be a satisfactory answer. Not even the wildest 
lunatic would dream of accusing the English or the 



Iniquity in High Places 223 

French or the Germans or the Russians or the Chi- 
nese or the Japanese of destroying the Maine. And 
however much the fiendish managers of the Ameri- 
can Satanic Press might desire to precipitate a war, 
no one outside an insane asylum would dream of ac- 
cusing Americans of having any connection with a 
plot to destroy a vessel belonging to their own 
country and manned by their own country- 
men. And no Spaniard of sane mind, however 
bitter his hatred of America and Americans, would 
think of involving himself or involving his country 
in such awful crime. To the Spanish Government 
and the Spanish nation the Maine affair was worse 
than a matter of life or death. It was a matter of 
absolute and certain death without hope or remedy. 
As the Maine was known to be in a Spanish port 
and surrounded by enemies, the electric flash that 
carried the news of her destruction around the world 
would also carry the presumption that she was de- 
stroyed through Spanish agency. The world would 
stand aghast and horror-stricken in view of such 
treachery, and would pour out execrations and curses 
upon Spain and all Spaniards. And no Spaniard of 
sane mind could fail to understand that a howl for 
vengeance would rise from every part of the United 
States, and that every atom of the resistless power of 
the American Republic would be called into requisi- 
tion to punish the authors of the crime. It would 
have been better for Spain to have blown up every 
one of her own battleships than to have blown up the 



224 Iniquity in High Places 

Maine by vile treachery. It would have been better 
for Spain to have destroyed every vestige of her navy 
and to have destroyed all her forts and arsenals than 
to have destroyed a single American skiff of such 
puny and pigmy dimensions that one man alone could 
have drawn it out of the water and turned it bottom 
up on the beach high above the waves and titles. 

But there was never a particle of evidence to show 
that the Spanish Government or the Spanish nation 
or even a single Spanish individual had any connec- 
tion whatever with the destruction of the Maine. 

The only people on the face of the earth who could 
derive any benefit from the destruction of the Maine 
were the Cuban insurgents. If the Cuban insurgents 
could blow up the Maine in such a manner as to leave 
upon the mind of the world and especially upon the 
mind of America the impression that the horrid deed 
was performed by the Spanish, then the success of the 
Cuban revolution was -absolutely assured. The 
Americans would appear in overwhelming force and 
wipe out the Spanish and all trace of the Spanish. 
And at that time it would seem that the Cubans were 
in possession of dynamite, for there were daily reports 
of their work in blowing up railroad bridges and rail- 
road trains. Whether the Cubans had courage 
enough, and energy and enterprise enough, and skill 
and coolness enough to concoct and carry out a plan 
to blow up the Maine is a question that will never 
be answered. And if any one were to mildly sug- 
gest that it would be a wicked thins: for the Cubans 



Iniquity in High Places 225 

to murder a large number of Americans on board the 
Maine in order to induce surviving Americans to mur- 
der a large number of Spanish in Cuba, we would 
simply respond that in the moral composition of Span- 
ish-Americans, which term, of course, includes Cubans, 
there is a much smaller amount of conscience than 
there is of cowardice. But there was never a particle 
of evidence that any Cuban was in any manner con- 
nected with the blowing up of the Maine. 

In this connection there is an item that may be 
worthy of notice. In the latter part of 1898, there 
was a meeting in Paris of American Commissioners 
and Spanish Commissioners to settle the terms of 
peace between the two countries. In the course of 
their discussions, the Spanish Commissioners strongly 
insisted that -there should be a thorough investigation 
in regard to the destruction of the Maine. They 
claimed that their country had been persistently and 
falsely accused of complicity in the perpetration of 
that awful crime, and was therefore entitled to an op- 
portunity to challenge all accusers to come forward 
and present their evidence. The Spanish Commis- 
sioners urged that the leading neutral powers of 
Europe be requested to appoint members of a court 
of inquiry, wdiose duty it would be to investigate the 
Maine affair and render an impartial opinion. 

It is to be presumed that the Spanish Commissioners 
did not expect that the terms of peace would in any 
wise be affected by the opinion of the neutral court 
of inquiry. As the Spanish were the defeated party 



226 Iniquity in High Places 

in the war, they undoubtedly expected to be robbed of 
their possessions. But they did not wish to be robbed 
of their good name by false charges. 

It would seem to have been nothing more than, 
common courtesy and common justice for the Ameri- 
can Commissioners to grant this request of the Span- 
ish. It would have caused no delay in the trans- 
action of their business. Peace could have been rati- 
fied and the Commissioners could have returned to 
their several homes, leaving the field open for the 
neutral court of inquiry to convene subsequently. But 
the Americans would have none of it. They flouted 
the whole proposition. They refused, point bank, to 
take the subject under consideration. And it is not 
difficult to ascertain the source from which the Ameri- 
can Commissioners drew their inspiration. Every 
morning the American Commissioners received a 
batch of telegrams from Washington, giving them 
directions in regard to the course they were to pur- 
sue on matters coming before them. The refusal to 
give the Spanish an impartial investigation by neutral 
nations came from under the same roof where the 
fiendish plot to send the Maine to Havana was con- 
cocted. 

A Horribly Wicked Act of Congress. 

In the hundred or more years of the existence of 
the American Congress, that body has never perpe- 
trated a deed of fouler criminality than -attaches to a 
legislative measure adopted on March 8, 1898. Os- 



Iniquity in High Places 227 

tensibly it was a step taken for national protection. 
Ostensibly it was a measure to appropriate the sum of 
fifty million dollars and to place that sum in the hands 
of William McKinley, to be expended by him at his 
discretion for the purposes of national defense. In 
reality it was a flaring announcement of a bare-faced 
lie that the country was in danger. In reality it was 
a trumpet call to arms. It was designed to kindle 
and excite and stimulate the war spirit among the 
masses of the American people. It was intended to 
lead the people up to that point that they would sus- 
tain our depraved and conscienceless politicians in 
their scheme to plunge the country into a career of 
bloodshed. We give a number of telegrams : 

SINEWS OF WAR. 



Fifty Millions for Defense. 



UNANIMOUS VOTE IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 



Blaze of Patriotism. 

Washington, March 8, 1898. — Every member of 
the House of Representatives cast his vote to-day for 
a bill placing in President McKinley's hands fifty 
million dollars, to be expended at his discretion for 
the national defense. Three hundred and eleven 
members voted for the bill, and not a single member 
voted against it. 



228 Iniquity in High Places 

London, March 8, 1898.— The handiwork of the 
great speculative ring of European dealers in war 
materials is now clearly manifest. For several days 
this ring of European speculators has been circulating 
false reports to the effect that Spain had succeeded in 
getting a new loan and is purchasing warships. The 
object of this falsehood is to excite the Americans and 
induce them to rush into the markets and buy war 
materials at double prices. But there is no truth in 
these manufactured reports. From the Governor of 
the Bank of France, from the Governor of the Rank 
of England, from the Rothschilds and from the Credit 
Lyonnais assurances are given that Spain has not been 
able to raise any money whatever. One of the lead- 
ing 1 financiers of the world said to-dav : 

"Spain is absolutely bankrupt at this moment. It 
" is utter nonsense to talk about a new foreign loan. 
" The Bank of Spain is insolvent." 



New York, March 8, 1898.— A "World" special 
from Washington says: The President has received 
a dispatch from Hon. Stewart L. Woodford, United 
States Minister to Spain, declaring that Spain has ex- 
hausted every means of raising money for war pur- 
poses, without success. All the financial centers of 
Europe have rejected the Spanish proposals for bor- 
rowing money. 



London. March 8, 1898. — Inquiry made here among 
financiers and diplomats who are most likely to know 



Iniquity in High Places 229 

the facts shows that they do not believe the report 
that a Spanish loan has been floated in London. 
Spain, it is true, has made repeated attempts to raise 
money, as previously cabled, the most recent effort 
being made only a fortnight ago, when the Roths- 
childs and other financiers who were approached em- 
phatically informed the Spanish agents that there was 
no money to be had from them for Spain. 



Washington, March 8, 1898.— The report that 
Spain has purchased two war vessels from Brazil is 
known to be incorrect, and the statement is made 
that if the United States should wish to buy these 
vessels there was reason to believe she would be given 
the opportunity. 



Washington, March 8, 1898. — Secretary Long, the 
Secretary of the Navy, was particularly busy all day. 
Before 1 o'clock he had been obliged to retire to his 
private office and to deny himself to callers in order 
to hold a conference. Senator Lodge was present, 
as well as Chairman Hale of the Senate Naval Com- 
mittee, Captain Crowninshield, Chief of the Navy 
Bureau ; Captain Bradford, Chief of the Equipment 
Bureau ; Captain Brownson and Assistant Secretary 
Roosevelt. 

Chief Constructor Hichborn and Admiral Mat- 
thews, Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, were 
also called to the conference. Secretary Long found 
during the progress of the conference to talk a mo- 



230 Iniquity in High Places 

ment with Mr. Lane, who has submitted to the De- 
partment proposals for the sale of certain warships 
now building in Europe at private shipyards. 

It is particularly with a view to acquiring informa- 
tion on the possibility of buying ships immediately 
that Captain Brownson has been selected to go to 
Europe. He is an officer of great discretion, and his 
experience on the Board of Inspection, which is 
charged with the duty of thoroughly examining all 
ships built for the navy, has familiarized him with all 
the details of the various types of warships, battle- 
ships, armored cruisers, protected cruisers, monitors 
and torpedo boats. 

Brownson will lose no time in starting for Europe. 
He will sail from New York for Southampton by the 
first available steamer, and will prosecute his duties in 
England and France with the utmost diligence and 
dispatch. At Southampton, where he will arrive early 
next week, he will be joined by Lieutenant K. C. Cold- 
well, naval attache of the American Embassy at Lon- 
don. Captain Brownson will go to France next with 
as little delay as possible, and will confer with Lieu- 
tenant W. S. Sims, naval attache to the American 
Embassy at Paris, and in his company inspect the two 
battleships, Marshal Florian and Marshal De Odoro. 
now building for the Brazilian navy and which, it is 
understood, can be purchased by the United States. 

It is now known positively that negotiations are in 
progress toward having the United States acquire the 
two crack cruisers now being built for Japan in pri- 



Iniquity in High Places 231 

vate shipyards in the United States. The two cruisers 
are not only being built for Japan, but they have 
already become the actual property of Japan by the 
payment of a considerable portion of the purchase 
price to wit, $1,350,000 each. They are within three 
months of completion on an emergency basis. They 
are designed to make 22 knots, which ranks them 
among the swiftest cruisers in the world. 

A cursory glance at the wording of that infamous 
measure adopted by Congress on the eighth of March, 
1898, might create the impression that this country 
was in danger of an attack from Spain. It might 
create the impression that the members of the Ameri- 
can Congress actually believed that the country was 
in imminent danger of being crushed by the over- 
whelming power of a merciless foe. But whatever 
may have been the standing, the rank, the record of 
these American Congressmen as regards their wicked- 
ness, their depravity, their criminality, there was not 
among their number a single individual idiotic enough 
to believe that Spain would ever lift a finger in hos- 
tility to the United States. What! That weak, 
feeble, bankrupt, broken-down, prostrate, helpless, de- 
caying, dying nation make war upon the greatest, the 
strongest, the richest, the most resourceful of all the 
powers that ever existed on the face of the earth ? 
Make war upon a country that had five times her pop- 
ulation, twenty times her area, fifty times her re- 
sources and a thousand times her cash and credit? 



232 Iniquity in High Places 

The proposition was utterly ridiculous, as was well 
known to every person concerned in the passage of 
that infamous fifty-million bill. That bill was a false 
pretense of danger, designed to deceive the American 
people into the belief that there was actual danger. 
It may be well said that William McKinley's Govern- 
ment was from beginning to end a government of 
false pretenses, as it was a government of murderous 
impulses and a government of murderous deeds. 

But it may be urged that Spain was reported to 
have been successful in borrowing money, and was 
expending that money in the purchase of warships. 
This report was entirely devoid of truth. On that 
very day in March, 1898, in which that infamous fifty- 
million bill was enacted by Congress there were tele- 
grams from the financial centers of the world declar- 
ing in the strongest terms that Spain could not raise a 
single cent of money. We have just inserted several 
of these telegrams. Every member of Congress 
must have had these telegrams before his eyes when 
he voted for that fifty-million bill. But the member 
of Congress on that occasion cast his vote for political 
effect, and not for the vindication and assertion and 
establishment of the right. As a matter of fact, there 
has never been in the history of these United States 
the one fifty-millionth part of a second of time when 
this government needed the expenditure of the one 
fifty-millionth part of a cent of money to defend itself 
against an attack from Spain. 

But granting that Spain had succeeded in borrow- 



Iniquity in High Places 233 

ing money and was endeavoring to purchase war ves- 
sels, why should" this circumstance justify America in 
raising a war cry of alarm and in marshaling her 
forces for battle? Suppose that to-morrow it should 
be announced that England was enlarging her navy 
by building and buying war vessels, would the Ameri- 
can heavens ring with a howl for British blood? If 
France were to engage in enlarging her navy by 
building and buying war vessels, would the halls of 
the American Congress ring with demands for the 
enactment of another fifty-million bill for national de- 
fense? If Germany or Russia were to enlarge their 
navies, would the United States consider such action 
a casus belli? By no means. If, then, the United 
States would look on with quietude and indifference 
while any or all of the great powers of Europe were 
engaged in enlarging their naval and military estab- 
lishments, why should the firebell in the night awaken 
the terrified inhabitants of the New World with the 
announcement that wretched, miserable, poverty- 
stricken Spain had succeeded in borrowing money to 
buy or build a ship? The object of that fifty-million 
bill was to precipitate a war. The passage of the bill 
was an assertion in the face of the American people 
and in the face of the whole world that the country 
was in danger. That assertion was an absolute false- 
hood. And every member of Congress who voted 
for the bill was a participant in the perpetration of 
the falsehood. The fifty-million-dollar bill was a fifty- 
million-dollar lie. It might be called a five hundred 



234 Iniquity in High Places 

milion-dollar lie if its name were to be suggested by 
the amount of the people's money that it caused to be 
squandered. It might be called a lie hot from Tar- 
tarus if its name were to be suggested by the source 
from which the governing powers of the country drew 
the inspiration that nerved them to their deeds of 
diabolism and death. But it served its purpose of 
inaugurating war. 

We desire to say that any increase in naval power 
that might accrue to the United States from the pas- 
sage of the fifty-million bill could have been obtained 
without the beating of tom-toms and without calling 
the people to arms. Considering the vast superiority 
of the great American Republic over any nation on 
earth as regards her power and wealth and resources, 
the navy of the country has exhibited a deficiency. 
Of course, in the good time coming it is to be expected 
that all navies and armies will be allowed to dwindle 
down to the nearest practicable approximation to the 
zero point, but the process of dwindling has not yet 
commenced. It can not commence too soon if navies 
are to be put to the base uses we have witnessed. But 
suppose that on or about the eighth day of March, 
1898, when the infamous fifty-million bill was adopted 
by Congress and when the foul falsehoods of the 
American Satanic Press had engendered excitement 
and irritation and animosity — suppose that it would 
have been considered good policy to increase the naval 
power of the United States by buying vessels. What 
would be the mode of procedure for the accomplish- 



Iniquity in High Places 235 

meat of this object? One of the telegrams we have 
here inserted contains an answer to this question. On 
the same eighth day of March, 1898, the Secretary of 
the Navy had a conference with the heads of the dif- 
ferent departments of the naval service. As a result 
of this conference, Captain Brownson was directed to 
start immediately for Europe. Arrangements were 
made that on landing in Europe he would be met by 
the naval attaches of the American embassies to the 
different European powers. In company with these 
gentlemen he was to visit the private shipyards of 
Europe and ascertain if any war vessels, whose con- 
struction was completed or whose construction was 
nearing completion, could be purchased by the Gov- 
ernment of the United States. 

And right here we may say that the information 
which Captain Brownson was directed to obtain should 
have been previously acquired by the Secretary of 
the Navy and should have been placed on record in 
his office. On the fourth of March, 1897, when Wil- 
liam McKinley was inaugurated President of the 
United States, the office of the Secretary of the Navy 
contained a model of every iron-clad war vessel that 
had been built by any nation on earth. The Secre- 
tary of the Navy should have an agent in every civ- 
ilized nation, whose duty it should be to watch all 
naval developments in that nation and report the same 
to Washington. The agent should report the amount 
of the annual legislative appropriation for the mainte- 
nance of the navy, and also the appropriation for build- 



236 Iniquity in High Places 

ing new vessels. He should report the number of 
vessels whose construction had been commenced in 
previous years, and he should report the length of 
time that would probably elapse before each of these 
vessels would be ready for service. He should re- 
port the dimensions, the proposed equipments and 
armaments of all vessels in process of construction. 
He should pay especial attention to private shipyards, 
as it would be in these yards that the United States 
would find opportunities to purchase vessels. 

But let us suppose that these arrangements for ob- 
taining information had been in operation for a num- 
ber of years, and were in full working order in that 
month of March, 1898, when the infamous fifty- 
million bill was enacted. We will suppose that in that 
month of March the Secretary of the Navy was in- 
formed by one of his agents in Europe that a war ves- 
sel at the point of completion could be purchased for 
three million dollars. 

The Secretary immediately confers with the Presi- 
dent and suggests that a bill be introduced into Con- 
gress, making the necessary appropriation for the 
purchase of the ship. The President, in a fleeting, 
transitory and wholly unnatural spasm of honesty and 
integrity, might respond as follows : 

"If the measure were to be accepted by Congress 
" and by the country as a step in the realization of the 
" established policy of the United States to increase 
" the strength of the American navy, I will render it 
" a hearty support. It would seem to be entirely 



Iniquity in High Places 237 

" proper that the strength of the American navy should 
" he commensurate with the wealth and power and 
" population and resources of the country. American 
" warships should rightfuly be built on American soil, 
" but if American national shipyards and private ship- 
" yards are not numerous enough or capacious enough 
" to complete within a reasonable period of time all 
" the work that may be desired of them, it may be 
" the part of wisdom to subsidize foreign shipyards 
" and render them tributary to the interests of our 
" navy. 

"But if the proposed purchase of this war vessel is 
" to be a step in the concoction of a foul conspiracy 
" to involve this nation in a cowardly and murderous 
" attack upon a neighboring friendly power simply 
" because that power is too feeble to offer effectual 
" resistance, I shall most certainly refuse to assist in 
" branding the American name with such damning" 
" disgrace. If the proposed purchase of this vessel 
" is to be a firebrand in the hands of unprincipled and 
" reckless demagogues to kindle the conflagration of 
" unholy war, if it is to kindle the horrid lust and 
" passion for shedding human blood that eternally 
" lurks in the deepest recesses of the human heart and 
" human soul, if it is to awaken and arouse the beast 
" that is latent in the moral constitution of every mem- 
" ber of the human . family, if it is to check and 
" thwart the hopes and aspirations and tendencies of 
" mankind to shake off the trammels of its animal 
" origin and to ascend to a loftier and nobler plane 



238 Iniquity in High Places 

" of spiritual and moral and intellectual life and light, 
"if it is to arrest the onward and upward march of 
" human progress and to turn back the faces of the 
" people toward their primeval savagery and bar- 
" barism, no genuine and unselfish lover of his fellow- 
" men will allow himself to be drawn into the sup- 
" port of such stupendous criminality." 

But it may be said that the purchase of a war 
vessel is not necessarily an act of criminality. True, 
and if all rulers were discreet and upright and con- 
scientious men the purchase of an entire fleet or an 
entire navy would not necessarily be an act of crim- 
inality. Ships of war may often be allowed to wear 
out and to rust out without ever firing a single hos- 
tile shot. But if the fifty million dollars, which were 
appropriated by the American Congress on the eighth 
of March, 1898, for alleged purposes of national de- 
fense were allowed to remain in the national treasury 
for twenty years without drawing a cent therefrom 
the iniquity of William McKinley and his copartners 
in crime in passing that bill would not lose the slight- 
est shade of its blackness. It is by the motives that 
prompt a ruler's deeds that we gauge and measure his 
moral status. And William McKinley's deeds were 
prompted by pure and unmitigated selfishness. His 
heart and soul were wholly wrapped up in the one 
object of securing his election to the presidency for a 
second term. He was ready to commit any crime 
to accomplish this purpose. He believed that if he 
were to plunge the country into war and thus gratify 



Iniquity in High Places 239 

the human thirst for human blood he would achieve a 
popularity that would insure his political success. 

We have in these pages repeatedly discussed the 
duties of rulers. These duties are so plain and ob- 
vious that they ought not to need even a single presen- 
tation. In case of prospective difficulties between na- 
tions, it is the duty of all rulers to endeavor to allay 
popular excitement, to endeavor to neutralize the ef- 
fects of inflammatory utterances, to quiet the mani- 
festations of popular passion, to rebuke the exhibition 
of racial animosity, to recommend moderation and 
patience and forbearance, to plead for the exercise of 
a spirit of amity, of charity, of fraternity in all our 
dealings with any and all peoples on the face of the 
earth. But there was no trace of conscientiousness in 
William McKinley's official deeds. He practically 
stood up before the American people and gave utter- 
ance to the atrocious falsehood that Spain was about 
to attack the United States. He uttered this false- 
hood for the purpose of exciting indignation and alarm 
among the American people, and thus rendering it 
an easy task to lead them into a wicked war. There 
could have been no honest motives whatever in the ut- 
terance of this foul slur upon Spain. If it were 
deemed advisable to increase the strength of the 
American navy more rapidly than could be done by 
the exclusive home manufacture of war vessels a 
competent agent could be sent to Europe to negotiate 
with the foreign shipbuilders for the purchase of any 
ship that was approaching completion. If the nego- 



240 Iniquity in High Places 

tiations of the agent were successful, and if they met 
with the approval of the American Government, a bill 
making the necessary appropriation could be slipped 
through Congress without creating the slightest ripple 
of excitement and without a single note of comment. 
A second and a third ship could be purchased in the 
same manner. And if the American Government de- 
sired vessels built according to certain specifications, 
a contract could easily be entered into with foreign 
shipbuilders. And all this could have been accom- 
plished without in any manner imperiling the mainte- 
nance of the nation's peace. No honest purpose could 
possibly be subserved by the ostentatious and spec- 
tacular enactment of a bill appropriating fifty millions 
of dollars for alleged national defense. The real ob- 
ject of the bill was to precipitate war for war's sake, 
and for the sake of political gain and political power. 
But there is another aspect of the case to be con- 
sidered. If difficulties are apparently about to arise 
between nations, it is the duty of every ruler who 
desires universal peace — and the ruler who does not 
desire universal peace is not fit to exercise the thin- 
nest, the emptiest, the gauziest shadow of executive 
power for the most infinitesimal portion of time — it 
is the duty of the ruler not only to curb the impa- 
tience of his own people, but also to refrain from any 
deed or word that would encroach upon the interests 
or wound the sensibilities of the people of another 
nation. And all nations in all times have been ex- 
ceedingly jealous in regard to any interference with 



Iniquity in High Places 241 

their territorial possessions. Would the English peo- 
ple consent to give up Cape Colony or the Transvaal 
or Egypt or India? Would the French people con- 
sent to give up Algeria or Senegambia or Madagascar 
or Cochin China? Would the American people con- 
sent to give up the Philippine Islands, even though 
their possession is a badge of the damning disgrace 
achieved in waging a most infamous and most 
iniquitous war? By no means. This being the case, 
we can readily understand that the Spanish people 
would be jealous of any interference with their pos- 
sessions in the island of Cuba, which had been theirs 
for four hundred years. And the Spanish Ministry 
that should endeavor to reconcile the Spanish people 
to any interference with their possessions in Cuba 
would find that it had assumed a most onerous task. 
And yet the Spanish Ministry did face this task. On 
the 31st of March, 1898, Stewart L. Woodford, 
United States Minister to Spain, telegraphed to Wil- 
liam McKinley : 

"Spanish pride will not permit the Ministry to pro- 
" pose and offer an armistice to the Cuban insurgents, 
" which the Ministry really desires to do. The Min- 
" istry has gone as far as they dare to-day." 

On April 3, 1898, Woodford wrote to Washing- 
ton : 

"The Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs assures 
" me that Spain will go as far and as fast as she can." 

These words explain themselves. They show that 
the Government of Spain was most anxious to avoid 



242 Iniquity in High Places 

a collision, and all excuse for a collision with the 
United States. And William McKinley knew it. 
William McKinley knew that Spain had never re- 
fused any request or demand that he hadmiade upon 
her. William McKinley knew that Spain had never 
said No to any proposition he had ever made to her. 
William McKinley knew that Spain was the humblest, 
the meekest, the most compliant, the most submissive 
of all nations. And yet William McKinley joined 
hands with the Satanic American Press and with the 
Satanic American Demagogues on the floor of Con- 
gress, and became their vile menial and tool in their 
nefarious designs of murderous warfare upon inno- 
cent, helpless, unoffending Spain. 

The Distressed Queen of Spain Vainly Begging 
for Mercy from William M'Kinley. 

On the 5th day of April, 1898, Stewart L. Wood- 
ford telegraphed to McKinley : 

"If the Queen of Spain should issue the following 
" proclamation before 12 o'clock noon of Wednesday, 
" April 6, will you sustain the Queen, and can you 
" prevent hostile action by Congress ? Please read 
" this proclamation in the light of all my previous 
" telegrams and letters. I believe that this proclama- 
" tion means peace, which the sober judgment of the 
" American people will approve long before Novem- 
" ber, and which must be approved at the bar of his- 
" tory." 



Iniquity in High Places 243 

THE QUEEN'S PROCLAMATION. 

"At the request of the Holy Father, in this Passion 
" Week, and in the name of Christ, I proclaim im- 
" mediate and unconditional suspension of hostilities 
" in the island of Cuba. This suspension is to be- 
" come immediately effective as soon as accepted by 
" the insurgents in that island, and is to continue for 
" the space of six months, to the 5th of October, 
" 1898. 

"I do this to give time for passions to cease, and 
" in the sincere hope and belief that during this sus- 
" pension permanent and honorable peace may be ob- 
" tained between the insular government and those of 
" my subjects who are now in rebellion against the 
" authority of Spain. I pray the blessing of heaven 
" upon this truce of God, which I now declare in His 
" name and with the sanction of the Holy Father of all 
" Christendom." 

On the night of this same April 5, 1898, a reply 
was sent from Washington to Woodford : 

"The President highly appreciates the Queen's de- 
" sire for peace. He can not assume to influence the 
" action of the American Congress beyond the dis- 
" charge of his constitutional duty in transmitting the 
" whole matter to them with such recommendations 
" as he deems necessary and expedient. ... If arm- 
" istice is offered by the government of Spain the Pres- 
" ident will communicate that fact to Congress. The 
" President's message will go to Congress to-morrow. 
" It will recount the conditions in Cuba. . . . He 



244 Iniquity in High Places 

" will not advise the recognition of the independence 
" of the insurgents, but will recommend measures look- 
" ing to the cessation of hostilities." 

In the dark and bloody career of William McKinley 
there is no wickeder act than this cold-hearted re- 
fusal to assist the Queen of Spain in the preservation 
of peace. Nothing can be more disgusting than his 
sniveling, hypocritical pretense that he highly appre- 
ciates the Queen's desire for peace. These words in 
the mouth of an honest man would convey the idea 
that peace is a most desirable condition, that peace is 
a consummation devoutly to be wished, that peace is a 
blessing to the world and to the inhabitants thereof. 
From the lips of William McKinley they are nothing 
but an empty, false and hollow conventionalism. If 
William McKinley really appreciated the Queen's de- 
sire for peace why did he not, as soon as he received 
the dispatch from Woodford, send a message to Con- 
gress declaring that as American charity had fur- 
nished an abundant supply of food to the starving Cu- 
bans, and as the Queen of Spain had stopped the war, 
there was every reason to hope for an early settle- 
ment of pending difficulties? With that hope predom- 
inating there could be no occasion whatever for even 
the semblance of military action. 

But McKinley said he could not assume to influence 
the action of the American Congress beyond the dis- 
charge of his constitutional duty in transmitting the 
whole matter to them with such recommendation as 
he deemed necessary and expedient. It was hardly 



Iniquity in High Places 245 

necessary for William McKinley to inform Stewart L. 
Woodford, or any other intelligent American citizen, 
that the Constitution of the United States limited the 
power of the President to the performance of certain 
specified duties. And it would have been entirely un- 
necessary to inform any intelligent citizen that not- 
withstanding the limitations of Presidential power the 
President of the United States has become an absolute 
monarch or absolute despot who holds the Western 
Continent in the hollow of his hand, and who is backed 
up by an obsequious Congress that stands ready at all 
times to indorse any line of action that he may sug- 
gest in regard to our relations with feebler powers. 

As a matter of fact, at the very moment when Wil- 
liam McKinley was dictating this reply to Woodford 
there was lying before him on his table a message 
which he informs W r oodford he intended to send to 
Congress the next day. The message was not sent till 
the 11 th of April, 1898, and when read in Congress it 
proved to be a recommendation for an immediate at- 
tack upon Spain without waiting for the formality of 
a declaration of war. A week later, on the 18th of 
April, 1898, McKinley sent a message to Congress, re- 
questing a declaration of war against Spain. If Wil- 
liam McKinley could constitutionally recommend war, 
why could he not, if he had the heart and soul and 
conscience of a true, genuine man, recommend peace 
according to the prayer of the Queen of Spain? But 
why was it that William McKinley desired war? It 
was because he believed that the wicked, wanton shed- 



246 Iniquity in High Places 

ding of human blood would endear him to the hearts 
of the American people, who would as a consequence 
rally to his political support with a zeal and a zest that 
would insure his triumphant re-election to the Presi- 
dency. 

In the telegram that Stewart L. Woodford sent to 
William McKinley there is an item or an expression 
that deserves notice. It would seem that Mr. Wood- 
ford cut an entirely creditable figure in all the deal- 
ings between the United States and Spain. When he 
was appointed minister to Spain in 1897 we believe 
that he was instructed by the American government to 
endeavor to cultivate a spirit of friendship between the 
two nations. At that time there was no perceptible 
war feeling to challenge attention as a possible factor 
in the future of American politics. The Satanic Press 
had not as yet got in its deadly work. Mr. Woodford 
was faithful to his trust. He seems to have won the 
confidence and esteem of the Spanish authorities. And 
when the sky was darkened with portents of the com- 
ing storm the Spanish government turned to him for 
assistance. The Queen of Spain either in person or 
through her ministry conferred with Air. Woodford, 
informed him of the coming proclamation and practi- 
cally begged him to intercede with William McKinley 
in their behalf. It was in that intercession that Mr. 
Woodford dropped the words to which we refer : 

"I believe that the Queen's proclamation means 
" peace, which the sober judgment of the American 



Iniquity in High Places 247 

" people will approve long before November, and 

" which must be approved at the bar of history." 

The words ''before November" really mean before 
the coming November election, and the use of these 
words shows that Woodford fully understood the ut- 
ter selfishness, the unappeasable and conscienceless 
greed that inspired the course of William McKinley. 
With William McKinley at that juncture the dominant 
question, the grand question, was this : Will the 
slaughter of thousands and tens of thousands and hun- 
dreds of thousands of innocent and helpless men, 
women and children strengthen my grasp on political 
power in the United States? William McKinley de- 
cided the question for himself in the affirmative, and 
he accordingly plunged the country into war. Stew- 
art L. Woodford did not fail to understand that the 
motive that prompted William McKinley was a desire 
for political power, and that in order to achieve this 
power he was prepared to sacrifice any amount of hu- 
man life. Stewart L. Woodford correctly sized up his 
man. Stewart L. Woodford read William McKinley 
through and through. Stewart L. Woodford dropped 
his plummet to the lowest levels of William McKin- 
ley's black heart, and with God-given intuition and 
with mathematical certainty figured up the cubic con- 
tents of that ocean of iniquity that heaved and surged 
in William McKinley's murderous and murderer's soul. 
Expansion. 
The advocates and supporters of the piratical attack 
upon Spain attempt to gloss over their iniquity by af- 



248 Iniquity in High Places 

firming that the part played by the United States in 
the affair was a divinely-appointed step in the process 
of American expansion. They claim it was the same 
principle and policy of expansion that has made our 
country the Queen of the Western Continent and that 
is yet to make her Queen of the World. Their 
motto is : "Westward the Star of Empire takes its 
way." 

But what is legitimate expansion? What is a legiti- 
mate method of extending territorial area over which 
a nation may exercise governmental control ? This 
question can be promptly answered by referring to the 
experience and history of this North American Con- 
tinent during the past two or three hundred years. 
If any nation finds upon its borders, north, south, east 
or west, a vast area of unoccupied and unclaimed ter- 
ritory with rich agricultural and mineral resources that 
no attempt has ever been made to develop, then that 
nation may properly take possession of that territory 
and throw it open for settlement by industrious and 
energetic men. It is foreign to our purpose to enter 
upon any discussion as to the justice or injustice of 
the white man in his dealings with the Indian. That 
is no longer a living issue, inasmuch as the Indians 
have nearly all disappeared. And the most rigid moral 
theorist would hardly insist that a handful of sav- 
ages, but a few degrees removed from beasthood, were 
entitled to keep the face of the American continent in 
the condition of an eternal wilderness when there were 
so many white men ready to assist in making it bios- 



Iniquity in High Places 249 

som like the rose. The rapid increase in the number 
of the whites and the rapid wasting away of the In- 
dians would naturally result in a steady migration to 
the westward. But this form of expansion is already 
a thing of the past as far as the United States are 
concerned. There is no longer any unclaimed territory. 
There is not a square rod of soil on the North American 
Continent which is not covered by some flag that is rec- 
ognized, world over, as an emblem of authority. The 
advance guard of American migration reached the 
shores of the Pacific more than sixty years ago, and 
during the intervening period has looked hopelessly 
westward across a wilderness of waters five thousand 
miles in breadth to a continent that is Mongolianized 
beyond redemption, and populated to the verge of 
starvation. A Caucasian soldiery might set foot on 
the soil of Eastern Asia, but a colony of Caucasian 
laborers with their wives and children who should 
seek to make homes for themselves and their posterity 
in that distant land, might possibly escape immediate 
death by violence but they would most assuredly suf- 
fer complete extinction by the horrid pangs of hunger. 
And yet there are magnificent openings for legiti- 
mate expansion that may yet come within reach of the 
United States. If the people of Canada should divide 
their country into a number of states, and then re- 
quest the American government to receive these states 
into the American Union on a footing of perfect equal- 
ity with the other states the American people should 
welcome and accept the proposition with a unanimous 



250 Iniquity in High Places 

and most enthusiastic vote in the affirmative. The Ca- 
nadian people are a free and independent people, hav- 
ing the same language, manners and customs and insti- 
tutions as the people of the United States, thoroughly 
experienced in self-government, and capable of manag- 
ing their domestic affairs and maintaining domestic 
tranquillity without the aid of a single professional 
soldier. If the people of Australia and of New Zeal- 
and should divide their territory into a number of 
states, and then request the American government to 
receive these states into the American Union that prop- 
osition should be instantly and joyfully accepted. As 
the people of these distant regions are of the same 
stock, the same race, the same blood, the same faith, 
the same tongue as the progenitors of the American 
people, and as they are every whit as free as ourselves 
they would blend with us into one fraternal unit, one 
harmonious whole. 

We may say, then, that there are but two methods 
of expansion which civilized, enlightened and con- 
scientious men should think of tolerating. One of 
these methods is the acquisition of unoccupied, un- 
claimed territory. The second method is the free 
and independent and voluntary blending together of 
peoples who are kindred by birthright — kindred and 
brethren by ties of blood. It should be observed that 
these two methods of expansion do not require any 
resort to violence or war. And in the good time 
coming when we shall have a Government of the 
World clothed with authority to settle all disputes be- 



Iniquity in High Places 251 

tween nations, then that Government of the World 
should have power to grant national independence to 
any and all races of men who show good and suffi- 
cient reason for requesting such grant. Then we 
should have no more Polands, and no more Finlands, 
and no more Philippines, and no more Porto Ricos 
held in subjection by greedy, grasping, brutal con- 
querors. A new-born nation should no more be 
called upon to fight its way to existence than a young 
man of twenty-one years of age should be required 
to whip or kill his father in order to be considered 
legally capable of transacting his own business. 

But the expansion for which so many Americans 
shouted enthusiastically in 1898 was an affair of a 
very different character. That expansion was the 
climax of human wickedness. That expansion was 
accomplished by conquering, trampling down, subju- 
gating and enslaving the people of another nation, 
race or tribe. The events that transpired in 1898 
were but the manifestations of the same spirit that 
prompted the wholesale murderers, the moral mon- 
sters of bygone ages, to ravage the face of the earth 
with fire and sword. Napoleon Bonaparte was a suc- 
cessful expansionist, who for nearly twenty years kept 
the continent of Europe in an incessant turmoil of 
war in his efforts to force the nations to submit to his 
authority. Alexander the Great, whose forces hewed 
their way through all opposition from the shores of 
the Mediterranean to the bounds of India, was an- 
other expansionist. Genghis Khan, whose Tartar 



252 Iniquity in High Places 

hosts swept the Old World from the Sea of Japan 
six thousand miles westward to the heart of Russia, 
and who is said to have destroyed one hundred 
walled cities, and to have put to death five millions 
of human beings without regard to age or sex, is a 
most notable exemplar of the style of expansion that 
was popular in the United States in 1898. 

We will look a little more closely at this matter of 
expansion as an alleged beneficial rule of action in 
national affairs. We will suppose that we have before 
us a map of Europe, in which the boundary lines of 
all the countries are clearly and accurately drawn. 
We will suppose that one or more of the European 
powers has become possessed of a mania for "expan- 
sion," caught possibly by infection from the United 
States. We will suppose that this mania calls for the 
acquisition of European territory. It will be seen 
at once that no European nation can secure an expan- 
sion of its domains without taking possession of ter- 
ritory belonging to another power. If one nation ex- 
pands, then the area of the dominions of another na- 
tion must contract and shrink. Such expansion will 
evoke deadly hostility. Expansion, then, is endless 
contention, endless strife, endless violence, endless 
crime. Expansion is robbery. It is piracy. It is 
wholesale murder. It is the outgrowth of total human 
depravity, of ancestral human beastliness. 

Nevertheless, the war policy that resulted in the 
conquest of the Philippines had its eulogists. A 



Iniquity in High Places 253 

prominent man in California, in a speech delivered on 
May 1, 1899, used the following language: 

"The white man's destiny has been one of progress 
" and expansion. Xo man and no political party or 
'* national administration has been forcible enough to 
" stop man's westward march to empire. Expansion 
" was not a new principle in American history. It 
'* has been taught from the beginning. Jefferson 
" practised it. That great statesman knew that when 
" a free people stood still they died. Expansion is a 
" necessity to national defense, national growth, na- 
" tional glory and national freedom. Nothing can 
" stop our national expansion except our national de- 
" struction." 

Here we have an exhibition of demagogical rant, of 
the cheapest, emptiest, most worthless character. 
What is the meaning of the expression, "When a free 
people stood still they died"? Does it mean that if 
any one nation refrains from aggressive warfare upon 
neighboring powers, and refrains from robbing neigh- 
boring powers of their possessions, then the people of 
that one nation will speedily become extinct? Does it 
mean that if universal peace were to reign now, hence- 
forth and forevermore throughout the world the 
human race would disappear from the face of the 
earth? Hardly. The expression, if it means any- 
thing, probably means that if a nation were to sheathe 
its sword and abandon a career of aggression and 
crime it would be smitten and stricken by a combina- 
tion of enemies in whom the spirit of insatiable human 



254 Iniquity in High Places 

greed and insatiable human bloodthirstiness was active 
and dominant. The expression probably means that 
all mankind are doomed to a living hell of endless war- 
fare in which those who do not gain the victor's 
crown must wear the victim's chains. But the average 
man cherishes no such pessimistic views. The aver- 
age man cherishes the fond faith that the good time 
coming will ultimately come along. 

But we are further informed that no earthly power 
can stop man's westward march to empire. We beg 
leave to say that man's westward march to empire is 
already stopped. The surges of the mighty Pacific, 
as they beat in ceaseless rhythm. on the shores of the 
American continent, distinctly reaffirm the solemn fiat, 
"Thus far and no farther shalt thou come." Starting 
from any point in California or Oregon or Washing- 
ton and sailing west, we reach Japan, with its forty- 
five millions of people. We reach Corea, with its fif- 
teen millions of people. We reach Manchuria, with 
its twenty millions. Does any one imagine that it will 
be nothing more than a pleasurable holiday picnic for 
the American nation to subjugate this eighty millions 
of people and hold them in bondage? Did not Russia 
make some attempt of that character, and was she not 
glad to abandon the task? And next door to us we 
would find three or four hundred millions of Chinese 
people. What millions upon millions of soldiers 
would the American nation be obliged to send forth 
in order to effect the permanent conquest and occu- 
pancy of the Chinese Empire ! What strenuous effort 



Iniquity in High Places 255 

would be required to move the American Star of Em- 
pire westward till it stood over the geographical center 
of all the regions inhabited by a Mongolian popula- 
tion ! 

But no American migration whatever would follow 
the "Star of Empire" in such a course. Xo American 
workingman would go to China to accept the miser- 
able pittance in the shape of wages, to accept the 
scanty, meager and repulsive diet, to accept the nar- 
row, pinched, destitute, comfortless mode of life 
that has been the inevitable lot of the Chinese 
laborer for untold ages. There is absolutely no 
opening whatever for planting an American colony 
on the continent or islands of Asia. On the north 
we find the frozen, inhospitable shores of the Arctic 
Ocean. On the south w r e have the pestilential, 
fever-breeding swamps of the Torrid Zone, where 
death stares ever}' white settler in the face. The 
central portions of the continent are occupied by 
countless swarms of locust-like human beings who 
ravenously devour every green thing and every 
live thing that the earth puts forth. Xo, the Amer- 
ican Star of Empire will cease all oscillations and 
will hang serenely over the village on the banks of 
the Potomac which derives its name from the Father 
of his Country. 

Commercial Expansion. 

It was persistently claimed that the military sub- 
jugation of the Philippine Islands would result in 
a vast enlargement of American commerce. At a 



256 Iniquity in High Place? 

banquet given in San Francisco in the early part 
of 1899 to President Harper of Chicago University 
the people present were favored with an address 
by Whitelaw Reid, who used the following" words: 

"Expansion means for San Francisco a future in 
" the next century whose immensity is only to be 
"guessed at now. China, with its 300,000,000 
" people, is awakening from a sleep of a thousand 
" years. With our outposts planted at her door, 
" what may not San Francisco hope for, when that 
" giant calls for what this country can supply? I 
" think I can see a commerce on the waters of the 
" Pacific greater than the Atlantic has ever known, 
" a San Francisco which shall rival Xew York. The 
" Pacific will be a lake on whose surface will sail a 
" fleet larger than that which now dots the other 
" great ocean." 

This address called forth comments from a local 
writer, who thus expressed himself : 

"The ideas of Mr. Reid are by no means a novelty. 
" They are to be heard on every hand. They are 
" supposedly a knock-down argument which every 
" expansionist has up his sleeve somewhat after the 
" manner of a slung-shot. The sapient individual 
" who now holds down the gubernatorial chair of 
" the State of California indulged in more or less 
" of that kind of talk in the late campaign. The 
" President of the San Francisco Chamber of Com- 
" merce has given us glowing pictures of the com- 
" mercial benefits that will result from the massacre 



Iniquity in High Places 257 

" of the Filipinos. But nevertheless these state- 
" ments and predictions are the emptiest and 
" thinnest of all possible trash. They are nonsense, 
" pure and unadulterated. They are the product of 
" combined idiocy and mendacity. 

"Look for a moment at our trade across the 
" Atlantic. It is the greatest transoceanic trade 
" the world has ever seen. A thousand million 
" dollars' worth of products pass to and fro every 
" year between the United States and Europe. But 
" is this traffic the result of any wild expansion 
" craze such as our unprincipled and brutal dema- 
" gogues are now fanning and fostering? Did our 
" fathers fifty or seventy-five or a hundred years 
" ago deem it necessary to wage war upon the 
" European nations and 'plant outposts' at their 
"doors? Did the}" seize upon the Hebrides or 
" Shetland Islands in order to secure access to the 
" port of Liverpool? Did they enter the Baltic and 
" Mediterranean Seas and wrest the Island of Goth- 
" land from Sweden, or the Island of Corsica from 
" France, or the Island of Sardinia from Italy, in 
"order to facilitate trade with these countries? 
" These questions require no answer. Nothing of 
" the kind was ever dreamed of, and nothing of the 
" kind would have been of the slightest use or the 
" slightest benefit. On the contrary, such action 
" would have been of serious detriment to all com- 
" mercial interests. Trade is encouraged by peace 
" and paralyzed by war. Our transatlantic trade is 



258 Iniquity in High Places 

based on the circumstance that the hungry people 
of the Old World were anxious to purchase our 
surplus food products, and were glad to pay for 
them in manufactured goods. That trade grew to 
its present mighty proportions during the eighty 
years of profound peace that prevailed between 
the United States and the nations of Europe. 
"And it is precisely in the same peaceful manner, 
and in no other manner, that our Pacific trade is 
to be developed if that trade is to rival the Atlantic 
trade in magnitude. As a matter of fact, we have 
had at all times full and free opportunities in that 
direction. An American vessel laden with the 
products of California can sail westward through 
the Golden Gate and crossing the Pacific or Indian 
Ocean can enter any port from Cape Town to 
Petropaulovski without let or hindrance. We are 
everywhere placed in the position of the most 
favored nations. Wherever the ships of any other 
nation can go, American ships can go. We are at 
full liberty to visit the markets of Asia and buy 
or sell what we please. The Asiatics are at full 
liberty to visit the markets of America, and buy 
or sell what they please. And all this we have 
without war. We have no more occasion to seize 
upon and occupy any portion of Asiatic soil than 
the Asiatics have to seize upon and occupy any 
portion of American soil. It can not be shown 
that the wicked conquest of the Filipinos will ever 



Iniquity in High Places 259 

" add one cent to the legitimate trade of San 
" Francisco." 

The Wicked War Upon the Filipinos. 

We can not properly close onr work without ad- 
verting to the Filipino War. We have persistently 
maintained in these pages that the war upon Spain 
was a most unnecessary and most iniquitous crime. 
We shall further claim that the Filipino War was a 
most unnecessary and most iniquitous adjunct to 
the crime of the Spanish W"ar. There was a vast 
difference between the situation and state of affairs 
in the Island of Cuba and the situation and state of 
affairs in the Philippine Islands. It may be said that 
the Island of Cuba was a purely Spanish country. The 
title to every acre of land in Cuba was derived from 
grants made by the king of Spain, just as the title 
to every acre of land in Massachusetts or Virginia 
or Georgia was derived from grants made by the 
king of England. The only language spoken in 
Cuba was the Spanish. The people of Cuba were 
of purely Spanish origin, with the exception of the 
negroes whose ancestors were brought from Africa 
as slaves, just as the people of the English colonies 
in North America were of English origin with the 
exception of the negroes whose ancestors had been 
brought from Africa as slaves. Cuba was there- 
fore essentially an integral portion of the Spanish 
Empire, — essentially a province of Spain and sub- 
ject to the authority of the Spanish government. 



260 Iniquity in High Places 

Of course it is understood that allegiance to gov- 
ernment in all lands and all ages is qualified by the 
rule laid down in the American Declaration of 
Independence. That rule declares that whenever a 
government becomes destructive of the rights of 
the people then the people are justified in altering 
or abolishing that government and creating a new 
one. A hundred years ago in these United States 
the expression, the "right of revolution" was in 
every man's mouth. We hear nothing of it now. 

But the situation in the Philippine Islands was 
entirely different. The Philippine Islands were 
never a Spanish country. The Spanish never con- 
stituted one out of a thousand of the total popula- 
tion of the islands. The Spanish were a mere hand- 
ful of intruders and invaders, not to say pirates and 
robbers, who landed on the shores of the islands and 
by reason of the fact that they were possessed of 
more deadly weapons than the natives were enabled 
to obtain a foothold. It is true that the course 
pursued by the Spanish in this matter did not differ 
from the course pursued by other European nations 
in similar circumstances. After Columbus had 
mapped out a path across the ocean every monarch 
in Europe seemed to imagine that if he sent forth a 
military and naval expedition to explore the earth's 
surface he was entitled to take forcible possession 
of any and all new countries he might discover. 
And if the native Filipinos had been accommodat- 
ing enough, upon the arrival of the Spanish, to have 



Iniquity in High Places 261 

wasted away and disappeared and died after the 
manner in which the North American Indians died 
upon the advent of the white man then the Spanish 
would probably have been left in sole and undis- 
puted occupancy of the soil of the islands. But the 
so-called inferior races are not always ready to 
vacate the surface of the earth. The inferior races 
are not always in a hurry to crawl under the sod 
to escape from the white man. The American people 
have found to their sorrow that the negroes will not die 
off in the presence of the whites. And there is no 
reason for supposing' that the Japanese or the 
Chinese or the Hindoos or the Malays will be any 
more obliging than the negroes in this respect. 

The Filipinos are in the Philippine Islands to 
stay. They have always been there. They prob- 
ably always will be there. The soil of those islands 
is their heritage handed down to them by their 
ancestors from the remotest generation. The soil 
of the Philippines never belonged to the king of 
Spain. It never belonged to the Spanish govern- 
ment. It never belonged to the Spanish people. 
According to international law, which is nothing 
more nor less than crystallized piracy, it may have 
been the case that Spain had a title to the Philip- 
pine Islands as against any other foreign nation, 
but she never had a shadow of a title as against the 
Filipinos themselves. During the three or four 
hundred years of Spanish occupancy of portions of 
these islands there was never a moment when the 



262 Iniquity in High Places 

Filipinos were not entitled to rise in force and 
sweep the corporal's guard, the beggarly baker's 
dozen, of Spanish adventurers into the sea. Nay, 
in the very year 1898, when William McKinley in 
furtherance of his fiendish scheme to plunge the 
American nation into a wicked war, and by gratify- 
ing the human thirst for human blood to make 
votes for his re-election to the presidency of the 
United States — when William McKinley in further- 
ance of this scheme sent troops to the Philippine 
Islands, he found that the people of those islands 
had achieved the freedom of nearly all their ances- 
tral territory, and had driven the few remaining 
Spanish troops to take refuge behind fortifications 
to escape destruction. 

And when the American forces first reached the 
Philippine Islands it was the clear and obvious duty 
of William McKinley to direct his military and 
naval officers to issue proclamations declaring it to 
be the intention of the government of the United 
States to establish and guarantee and insure the 
personal liberties and the national independence 
of the people of those islands. But William 
McKinley did nothing of the kind. William 
McKinley was not in search of the path of duty. 
It may be said that he could not be relied upon to 
perform any duty whatever that involved the pos- 
sibility of the sacrifice of his personal interests. 
In matters political he never undertook to row his 
boat against the stream. He was at all times pre- 



Iniquity in High Places 263 

pared to float with the current of the wickedest, 
the most brutal, the most despicable popular senti- 
ment, if that current gave promise of conveying him 
to the haven of political success. He believed that 
the American people were animated by a spirit of 
insatiable greed for power over other nations, and 
he believed that he would propitiate that wicked 
greed by attacking and subjugating and enslaving 
innocent and helpless peoples. In killing Filipinos 
he was looking for American votes. He got them. 

When the treaty of peace between the United 
States and Spain had received its final ratification 
William McKinley should have promptly sent a 
message to Congress urging the adoption of edu- 
cational measures. 

Educational Message. 
" To the Congress of the United States: 

"The termination of the war with Spain has left 
" upon our hands the Philippine Islands and the 
" islands of Cuba and Porto Rico. The people of 
" these islands are entitled to life, liberty and the 
" pursuit of happiness. They are entitled to inde- 
" pendence and self-government. But as they have 
" been kept in a condition of ignorance and degra- 
" dation for centuries there is room for grave doubt 
" as to their capacity to establish self-government 
" without assistance. I deem it the duty of the 
" American people to render such assistance. And 
" the effectual means of accomplishing this grand 



264 Iniquity in High Places 

scheme of beneficence is to secure the diffusion 
of popular intelligence among the inhabitants of 
these islands. I therefore recommend the appro- 
priation of twenty million dollars per annum from 
the United States Treasury for the support of an 
effective educational system in the Philippine 
Islands, and an appropriation of ten million dol- 
lars per annum for a similar object in Cuba and 
Porto Rico. It is understood that the public 
schools in the Philippine Islands have been closed 
for a number of years on account of the war be- 
tween the native Filipinos and the Spanish gov- 
ernment. This being the case, the cause of edu- 
cation must be in a deplorable condition. The 
public schools should be immediately re-opened, 
and the properly qualified native teachers should 
be re-employed at a rate of wages decidedly in 
advance of the scanty remuneration they received 
in former years. Normal schools and colleges 
should be established, in order that the talented 
youth among the Filipino people should have an 
opportunity to obtain the highest grade of quali- 
fication for service in the profession of teaching. 
Commodious schoolhouses, adapted to climatic 
conditions, should everywhere be erected. Text- 
books should be printed in the different native 
languages and distributed free of cost to pupils of 
the schools. A board of education commissioners 
should be appointed, in the hope of infusing some- 
what of the vigor and force and effectiveness of 



Iniquity in High Places 265 

" American schools into the schools of our tropical 
" regions. 

"After the expulsion of the Spanish from Fili- 
" pino soil the only valid excuse which Americans 
" can plead for remaining in the Philippine Islands 
" is the hope and desire of rendering some sub- 
" stantial service to the Filipino people. As every 
" strong and duty-loving member of the human 
" family is bound in case of need to extend a helping 
" hand to a feeble and suffering fellow-man, so is 
" every powerful and prosperous nationality on 
" earth under moral obligation to encourage the 
" weaker and less-enlightened races to enter upon the 
" path of improvement and progress. If the presence 
" of Americans can not be rendered conducive to the 
" interests, the welfare and development of the Fil- 
" ipino people then we should evacuate their territory 
" at once. 

(Not Signed) "WILLIAM McKINLEY." 

Xo person' familiar with the current of events in 
these United States for ten years subsequent to the 
year 18''/ would imagine for a moment that such 
noble sentiments as are expressed in this supposed 
message could possibly emanate from an individual 
so weak and worthless and selfish as William Mc- 
Kinley. But it may be urged that the government of 
the United States has already accomplished a noble 
work in the matter of educating the Filipino people, 
having sent shiploads of American teachers to the 



266 Iniquity in High Places 

Philippine Islands to labor in the Filipino schools. 
We beg leave to say that the government of the 
United States has practically done nothing in the line 
of educating the Filipino people. The Philippine 
Islands are governed by the Philippine commission, 
the members of which are appointed by the President 
of the United States. The Philippine commission is 
clothed with authority as absolute and unquestioned 
and despotic as that which the Czar of Russia or the 
Sultan of Turkey exercise in their dominions. The 
Philippine commission has appointed American teach- 
ers to positions in the Filipino schools, but the salaries 
of these teachers are paid with money collected at the 
bayonet's point from the pockets of the poverty- 
stricken Filipino people. It is said that the American 
teachers in the Philippine Islands are paid one hun- 
dred dollars per month for their services. It is also 
said that the native teachers, previous to the war, were 
paid from six to fifteen dollars per month. If we 
assume that the native teachers received an average 
of ten dollars per month for their services we shall 
find that the American teacher receives ten times as 
much salary as did the Filipinos. And the money is 
worse than wasted. If an American teacher who does 
not know a word of the Filipino languages is put in 
charge of a class of Filipino pupils, no one of whom 
knows a single word of English, will somebody ex- 
plain to us the process by means of which an inter- 
change of ideas can be effected ? Even if the teacher 
should write simple English words and simple and 



Iniquity in High Places 267 

brief English sentences, and should by signs give 
directions to the pupils to imitate his writing, not one 
of them would understand the meaning. All children 
should be taught to read in the vernacular of their own 
country and of their own homes, and their first 
teachers should be persons born to the use of the same 
language. 

If five thousand Japanese teachers, or five thousand 
Russian teachers, or five thousand Filipino teachers 
were to drop down upon the State of California, if not 
one of these foreign teachers were to understand a 
single word of the English language, if they were to 
displace the California teachers now in charge of our 
public schools, if they were to receive salaries ten 
times as large as the salaries now paid to California 
teachers, if this vast increase in expenses were to be 
met by increased state taxation on property, if our 
system of public instruction were to be thus paralyzed 
and rendered a farce and a fraud and a sham, if our 
system of public instruction were thus to drop in 
value to a level a hundred points below zero, the 
people of California would not feel like breaking out 
in joyful thanksgivings of praise to Almighty God for 
the infinite love and wisdom and mercy thus exhibited 
in graciously vouchsafing to them such inestimable 
blessings. 

But if the rulers of the American people at that 
juncture had been possessed of a spirit of justice and 
duty and right that would prompt them to establish 
a genuine and effective system of public education for 



268 Iniquity in High Places 

the benefit of the children of the nations and races 
that had been victimized by the war, what a glorious 
new era and glorious historical era would have dawned 
upon the world! Here we would have the amazing 
spectacle of a conquering nation caring for the 
children of its victims as kindly, as benevolently, as 
liberally as it would for its own children. The whole 
world would have rendered obeisance to the moral 
grandeur of this action, and would have been shamed 
into the adoption of a similar policy in similar cir- 
cumstances. And when all the people of the world 
were wrought up to such a standard of moral ex- 
cellence it would require but a turn of the hand to 
induce them to abolish all war forever. But William 
McKinley would not have lifted a finger or uttered a 
syllable in favor of appropriating American money 
for the purpose of educating Filipino children. He 
would have feared that such a policy would meet with 
a strong undercurrent of opposition, and he would 
have feared that that undercurrent would sweep his 
political craft upon the rocks, a hopeless wreck. 
William McKinley did not propose to lose votes by 
doing the right when there was a fine opening to make 
votes by doing the wrong. 

But the crowning crime, the towering crime, of 
William McKinley in connection with the Philippine 
Islands was his wicked destruction of the natural, 
God-given liberties of the people, and the horrid 
wholesale slaughter he committed in the process of 
subjugating and enslaving the country. There was 



Iniquity in High Places 269 

but one possible excuse for the act of William McKin- 
ley in landing American soldiers on Filipino soil. He 
had commenced war upon Spain. This, of itself, was 
an act of supremest wickedness, as we have persist- 
ently maintained in all these pages. But as war had 
been inaugurated it was entirely in accordance with 
universal usage that Americans should strike at a 
Spanish head wherever it was seen. It was known 
that there was more or less of a Spanish naval and 
military force in the Philippine Islands. An American 
expedition was sent there, and Spanish power was 
speedily annihilated. The last Spaniard having been 
driven away, the obvious duty of the Americans was 
to evacuate Filipino territory immediately. There was 
absolutely no justification or excuse whatever for 
American usurpation of authority over Filipino people 
or Filipino territory. All persons and all peoples and 
all countries are naturally and properly free, and any 
abridgment or curtailment or limitation of that free- 
dom is a matter that demands explanation, if not 
prompt remedy. The Declaration of Independence 
affirms that all men are created equal, and that they 
are endowed by their Creator with an inalienable right 
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If that 
statement was true when made by the American 
Fathers in 1776 it is true to-day. If that statement is 
true no man has any right to enslave and chattelize 
another man, and to force that slave to work like an 
ox in the field or to sell that slave like an ox in the 
market. If the statement of the fathers be true then 



270 Iniquity in High Places 

no nation or race or tribe has any right to subjugate 
and enslave the people of another race or nation and 
to rob the conquered people of the fruits of their 
industry by any system of pillage or extortion or 
taxation or imposts. 

As there is no Government of the World to exercise 
authority in affairs between nations William McKinley 
should have resorted to consultation with the leading 
powers of the earth. He should have addressed a note 
to the rulers of each and every one of the so-called 
civilized nations. He should have informed them that 
in his opinion the people of the Philippine Islands 
were as fully entitled to freedom as were the people 
of the United States. He should have declared that 
the weakness of a nation or a people furnished no 
excuse whatever for any encroachment upon their 
independence by stronger powers. He should have 
stated that as the Spanish had been for generations 
and centuries the sole repository of political power in 
the Philippine Islands the sudden departure of the 
Spanish had left the islands without any body of men 
accustomed to the exercise of governmental authority. 
He could properly have stated that in order to remedy 
this deficiency he intended to select reliable, capable, 
well-known and influential Filipinos to act as an ad- 
visory body in governmental affairs. Most especially 
should he have declared his intention to make liberal 
expenditures of money for the purpose of affording 
the best possible education to every Filipino child in 
order that the next generation of Filipinos might come 



Iniquity in High Places 271 

upon the stage of action fully equipped for the dis- 
charge of the duties of life. He should have further 
asserted his design to evacuate the Philippine Islands 
as soon as the Filipino people had made such progress 
in the march of improvement as would insure them 
against any danger of retrogression to their former 
condition of ignorance and bondage. He should also 
have expressed the hope that the rulers of the nations 
would indicate their approval of the policy he pro- 
posed to pursue, and would also have the goodness to 
suggest improvements in details of that policy. 

But William McKinley was not man enough to ex- 
press sentiments of this character. He was not man 
enough to cherish such sentiments. He believed that 
popularity and influence and political power were 
more effectually gained by pandering to the bestiality 
of the human race. He believed that next to the love 
for shedding human blood the strongest passion in 
the breast of the human animal was an insatiable greed 
for power and for spoils. He believed that if ten 
millions of Filipino captives, manacled and chained, 
were paraded before the admiring eyes of the Amer- 
ican people the spectacle would evoke an irrepressible 
outburst of popular enthusiasm that would render him 
absolute master of the political situation. William 
McKinley knew that every nation and race of men on 
earth delights to feel under its feet the squirming of 
the peoples it has trampled down, and he also knew 
that his surest means of obtaining personal and 
political success was to stimulate and intensify the in- 



272 Iniquity in High Places 

born and inevitable brutishness and bestiality of the 
human animal. 

We will illustrate the situation as between William 
McKinley and Spain. Near your residence is a dilapi- 
dated shanty, a mere, miserable hovel, occupied by an 
old woman, eighty years of age, crippled, paralytic, 
bed-ridden, helpless. You make an attack upon that 
hovel. You kick down the door. You rush in. You 
drag that old woman from her bed. You jump upon 
her and trample out her life. And then when her eye 
is glazing and the blood is oozing from her mouth you 
proudly strut back and forth beside the still quivering 
corpse and pat yourself on the breast and say : 

"See what a noble, brave and patriotic American I 
am ! Vote for me next election." 

You then proceed to rifle the pockets of the dead in 
search of money and valuables as an "indemnity" for 
the damage you have received in wetting your boots 
in the blood of your victim, and then conclude your 
"glorious display" by raising the American flag over 
the spot and declaring that no true American would 
consent that that flag should ever be pulled down. 

Your attitude in this matter is exactly identical in 
every respect with the attitude of William McKinley 
toward Spain in regard to Cuba. 

If William McKinley had possessed the slightest 
spark of that conscientiousness, that spirit of philan- 
thropy and humanity and charity that he falsely and 
hypocritically claimed to be the motive power that 
prompted him to act in Cuban affairs, he would have 



Iniquity in High Place's 273 

registered a solemn oath before God, angels and men 
that he would not allow these United States to acquire 
one square inch of territory or one iota or scintilla of 
material advantage in any form or shape as a result 
of the prosecution of the war for the relief of Cuban 
suffering. To give emphasis and effect and world- 
wide publicity to his declarations on this point he 
should have requested Congress to give him permis- 
sion to hold a mass meeting on the steps of the 
National Capitol. He should have invited the mem- 
bers of Congress to attend that meeting as individuals. 
He should have invited the members of the Supreme 
Court to attend in official form. Fie should have in- 
vited the diplomatic body. He should have invited all 
national and state officials and all citizens. 

In the presence of this vast assemblage he should 
have declared that war is a relic of the bestiality, the 
savagery, the barbarism of the human race. He 
should have declared that the gravest, the most vital 
problem that confronts mankind is the devising of 
ways and means to abolish all wars forever. But while 
the total extirpation of war may not yet be within our 
reach much may be done to diminish the amount of the 
miseries, the horrors, the destruction, the murder that 
war produces. One of the great evils which attend a 
prolonged military conflict between nations is to be 
found in the fact that the original cause of the war is 
often overlooked or forgotten. New issues are raised. 
New claims and demands are made. Animosities wax 
fiercer and fiercer, and take deeper root in the hearts 



274 Iniquity in High Places 

of the parties to the contest. William McKinley 
should have declared that in order to avert this evil it 
should be the duty of every nation issuing a procla- 
mation of war to fully and clearly announce the 
objects of that war, and to further announce that with 
the attainment of these objects the war should im- 
mediately be terminated. In accordance with this rule 
William McKinley should have declared that the sole 
and only object of the proposed attack upon Spain 
was to relieve the sufferings of the people of Cuba. 
He should have accordingly pledged himself that as 
soon as the object of the war was attained he would 
issue orders that all military and naval operations 
should cease, and that a peace conference should im- 
mediately assemble. He should have further pledged 
himself that he would not allow the government of the 
United States to obtain, secure or hold anything in the 
nature of what may be termed prizes of war. He 
would not allow the government of the United States 
to obtain anything by land or by sea ; no property, no 
goods, no chattels, no rights, no privileges, no powers. 
He would not allow any American force, occupying 
any portion of Spanish soil, to bring back therefrom 
as much as a single chip, not as much as a leaf from 
a tree, not as much as a grain of sand frm the seashore. 
William McKinley should have announced his readi- 
ness to take an oath to conduct the proposed war upon 
Spain in accordance with the lines of limitation he had 
laid down, and he should have invited the Supreme 
Court of the United States to administer such oath to 



Iniquity in High Places 275 

him then and there. He should have further an- 
nounced his intention to send a message to Congress 
stating that he would not approve of any declaration 
of war against Spain unless that declaration specifi- 
cally pledged the American Congress to the observ- 
ance and enforcement of these same lines of limitation. 

As a matter of course such action on the part of 
William McKinley would be entirely devoid of any 
legal weight or bearing or authority, but it would have 
a most potent moral effect upon the entire world. All 
mankind would intuitively recognize the wisdom and 
justice of a rule of action that should require every 
proclamation of war to be accompanied with a com- 
plete and clear statement of the objects of that war, 
and also to be accompanied with a specific pledge that 
the war should terminate the moment its objects were 
attained. And if all wars were to terminate as soon 
as their avowed objects were accomplished then the 
war upon Spain in regard to Cuba would have stopped 
before it commenced, for all Cuban sufferings had 
been fully relieved before William McKinley ordered 
the first shot to be fired. William McKinley himself 
admits this fact in the message which he sent to Con- 
gress on April 11, 1898. We have already noted this 
admission in these pages. 

The adoption of the rule or custom that every 
declaration of war should be accompanied by a clear 
and full statement of the objects of that war would 
greatly expedite the coming of the day when all war 
shall be abandoned. When a nation has made a full 



276 Iniquity in High Places 

statement of the objects of a war, then the other 
nation, the nation thus antagonized, should have equal 
opportunity to make a counter statement in regard to 
the whole matter. And when the two nations had 
assumed the position of plaintiff and defendant, when 
they had, so to speak, filed their complaint and answer, 
then the world would certainly feel inclined to insist 
that the case should be put on trial in the Hague Court 
or in a World's Congress. 

We have from time to time in these pages advanced 
suppositions as to what would have occurred under 
certain circumstances provided William McKinley had 
been actuated by an all-controlling desire to render 
true service to God and man. We have advanced these 
suppositions for the purpose of showing by way of 
contrast the utter iniquity of the deeds that William 
McKinley did perform. The character of William 
McKinley will be correctly read in future ages when 
all the horrors of war shall have become a tradition of 
the past. The searchlight of God's universe will yet 
be turned in full blaze on William McKinley's wicked- 
ness. Cold-blooded, callous-hearted, conscienceless, 
merciless, William McKinley sacrificed the lives of 
thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of 
thousands of innocent and helpless human beings in 
order to advance his own political interests. Instead 
of endeavoring to uplift and ennoble humanity Wil- 
liam McKinley became the vile panderer to the 
universal greed, the universal bloodthirstiness, the 
universal beastliness which the human race of to-day 



Iniquity in High Places 277 

has inherited from the ferocious wild human animal of 
millions of years ago. 

Victor Hugo. 

In 1849 that most noble French philosopher, Victor 
Hugo, was elected president of the General Peace 
Congress which convened in Paris in that year. His 
inaugural address was a perfect inspiration. He 
alluded to the fact that several hundred years ago 
there were provinces and cities in France that were in 
a condition of perpetual warfare. These wars had 
been so continuous that no sane man would predict 
that they would ever terminate. But the wars had 
ceased, and there was now perfect peace and harmony 
between the cities and provinces where there had once 
been endless bloodshed. From this blissful and blessed 
change in the relations, subsisting between the com- 
ponent parts of the French population and the French 
territory Victor Hugo argued that the great powers of 
earth, the component parts of the world's population 
and the world's territory, would yet cast aside the 
implements of war, and cherish and cultivate the ties 
of friendship and fraternity. 

The American people should carefully weigh the 
words of Victor Hugo in order that they may be able 
to appreciate the wickedness of all war. It is un- 
doubtedly true that the particular form of savagery to 
which Victor Hugo alludes as having desolated 
France in bygone centuries will never again appear 
among civilized nations, but the disposition to resort 



278 Iniquity in High Places 

to the flimsiest of pretexts for the purpose of plunging 
countries into foreign wars still remains. 

We give the following extract from Victor Hugo's 
speech : 

"If four centuries ago, at the period when war was 

" made by one district against the other, between cities 

" and between provinces ; if, I say, some one had dared 

" to predict to Lorraine, to Picardy, to Normandy, to 

" Brittany, to Auvergne, to Provence, to Dauphiny, to 

" Burgundy : 'A day shall come when you will no 

longer make wars ; a day shall come when you will 

' ' no longer arm men one against the other ; a day 

' ' shall come when it will be no longer said that the 

' Normans are attacking the Picards, or that the 

' ' people of Lorraine are repulsing the Burgundians ; 

' you will still have many disputes to settle, interests 

" ' to contend for, difficulties to remove, but do you 

' know what you will substitute instead of armed 

' ' men, instead of cavalry and infantry, of cannon, of 

" ' falconets, lances, pikes and swords — you will select, 

" ' instead of this destructive array a small box of 

" ' wood which you will term a ballot-box, and from 

' which issue — what ? — an assembly, an assembly in 

" ' which you shall all live, an assembly which shall 

" ' be, as it were, the soul of all, a supreme and popular 

" ' council which shall decide, judge, resolve every- 

" ' thing ; which shall make the sword fall from every 

" ' hand and excite the love of justice in every heart, 

" ' which shall say to each, "Here terminates your 

" ' right, there commences your duty ; lay down your 



Iniquity in High Places 279 

' ' arms ; live in peace." And in that day you will 
' ' have one common thought, common interests, a 
' common destiny ; you will embrace each other and 
' recognize each other as children of the same blood 
' and the same race ; that day you will no longer be 
■ hostile tribes — you will be a people ; you will no 
' longer be Burgundy, Brittany or Provence — you 
' will be France. You will no longer make appeals 
' to war, you will make appeals to civilization' ; if at 
the period I speak of some one had uttered these 
words all men of serious and positive character, all 
prudent and cautious men, all the great politicians of 
the period would have cried out : 

" 'What a dreamer! What a fantastic dream! How 
' little is this pretended prophet acquainted with the 
' human heart ! What ridiculous folly ! What an 
' absurd chimera !' 

"Yet, gentlemen, time has gone on and on, and we 
find that this dream, this folly, this absurdity, has 
been realized. And I insist upon this — that the man 
who would have dared to utter so sublime a 
prophecy would have been pronounced a madman 
for having dared to pry into the designs of the Deity. 
Well, then, you at this moment say — and I say it 
with you — we who are assembled here say to France, 
to England, to Prussia, to Austria, to Spain, to Italy, 
to Russia — we say to them : 

"A day will come when from your hands also the 
arms you have grasped will fall. A day will come 
when war will appear as absurd, and be as impos- 



280 Iniquity in High Places 

" sible between Paris and London, between St. Peters- 
" burg and Berlin, between Vienna and Turin, as it 
" would be now between Rouen and Amiens, between 
" Boston and Philadelphia, between Cincinnati and St. 
" Louis. A day will come when you, France ; you, Rus- 
sia ; you, Italy; you, England: you, Germany; all of 
" you, nations of the continent, will, without losing your 
" distinctive qualities and your glorious individuality, 
" be blended into superior unity and constitute a 
" European fraternity, just as Normandy, Brittany, 
" Burgundy, Lorraine, Alsace have been blended into 
" France. A day will come when the only battlefield 
" will be the market opening to commerce and the 
" mind opening to new ideas. A day will come when 
" bullets and bombshells will be replaced by votes, by 
" the venerable arbitration of a great sovereign senate, 
*' which will be to Europe what the Parliament is to 
" England, what the Diet is to Germany, what the 
" Legislative Assembly is to France. A day will come 
" when a cannon will be exhibited in public museums, 
" just as an instrument of torture is now, and people 
" will be astonished how such a thing could have been. 
" A day will come when those two immense groups, 
" the United States of America and the Fnited States 
" of Europe, shall be seen placed in presence of each 
" other, extending the hand of fellowship across the 
" ocean, exchanging their produce, their genius, clear- 
" ing the earth, peopling the deserts, improving 
" creation under the eye of the Creator, and uniting 
" for the good of all, those two irresistible and infinite 



Iniquity in High Places 281 

" powers, the fraternity of men and the power of 
" God." 

Cardinal Gibbons Pleads for Peace. 

On Jan. 6, 1901, Cardinal Gibbons delivered a 
sermon in the cathedral in Baltimore in which he re- 
viewed briefly the events of the century just closed, 
with special reference to the wars which have been 
waged during that period, as a preface to an urgent 
plea for universal peace. He incidentally touched 
upon the subject of the proposed increase of the stand- 
ing arm_\- in this country, pointing out the evil results 
arising from the maintenance of large bodies of armed 
men in Europe, and expressed the hope that similar 
conditions may never obtain in this country. 

Cardinal Gibbons began by stating that the mission 
of Christ was a mission of peace. He said : 

"Before the advent of Christ war was the rule, 
" peace was the exception throughout the world. But 
" although wars are less frequent and less inhuman 
" under the Christian dispensation than in pagan 
" times, it must be confessed that we are, as yet, far 
" removed from the millennium of universal peace. 
" \\ hen we read of a great military campaign our 
" imagination revels in the. contemplation of the heroic 
" achievements of famous generals. We listen with 
" rapture to the clash of arms, the shouts of the 
" victors and the sound of martial music. We seem 
" to catch the spirit of enthusiasm by which the com- 
" batants were animated. But we take no note of the 



282 Iniquity in High Places 

" shrieks and agonies of the soldiers weltering in their 
" blood on the battlefield. We have no thought of the 
" sick and wounded lying in hospitals and prisons. We 
" are unmindful of sorrowing wives and mothers at 
" home weeping and sighing for the loved ones far 
" away. 

"It is a subject of great concern to the friends of 
" the gospel of peace that Christian Europe presents 
" to-day the spectacle of a huge military camp. May 
" God so guide our legislators and statesmen that they 
" may never be betrayed into imitating European gov- 
" ernments by the establishment of formidable stand- 
" ing armies. God forbid that we ourselves, flushed 
" with recent victories, should ever become intoxicated 
" with the wine of imperialism or militarism, but may 
" we always follow the traditions of the fathers of the 
" republic. 

" Hitherto we have presented to the world a beauti- 
" ful spectacle. Europeans, accustomed at home to 
" meet a soldier or gendarme on every street corner, 
" have been filled with surprise and admiration when 
" they found on arriving in this country that a nation 
" of such vast extent and such an immense population 
" had an army of only 25,000 men. They have been 
" forcibly impressed with the fact that they can travel 
" from Maine to California without meeting a single 
" soldier. They see that every citizen of the United 
" States is a soldier without uniform, engaged in the 
" active pursuits of life and ready at a moment's notice 
" to defend his country. They would feel that we are 



Iniquity in High Places 283 

" a strong nation because we cheerfully bow to the 
" majesty of the law and are not confronted and in- 
" timidated by military satraps. May this fair picture 
" never be defaced. 

"God grant that the new century which has just 
dawned upon us may inaugurate a new era of peace." 
Bishop J. L. Spalding on Imperialism. 

At a meeting in Chicago on April 30, 1899, Bishop 
Spalding of Peoria, Illinois, said : 

"We are, at present, in the midst of a crisis in which 
" lack of thought and deliberation may lead us far 
" from the ideals which, as Americans, we have most 
" cherished, and may expose us to evils of which we 
" scarcely dream. We stand at the parting of the 
" ways. It is not yet too late to turn from the way 
" which leads through war and conquest to imperial- 
" ism, to standing armies, to alliances with foreign 
" powers, and finally to the disruption of the Union 
" itself. It is not too late, because it is still possible — 
" probable — even, that the American people will re- 
" consider the whole question of the complications in 
" which our victories over Spain have involved us, and 
" calling to mind the fact that they did not enter into 
" this war for the purpose of becoming an empire, but 
" for the purpose of helping others to throw off the 
" yoke of tyrannical imperialism, will see that to be 
" blinded and led away by success is to be weak and 
" foolish ; or, rather, since here the highest interests of 
" humanity are at stake, is to be wicked and criminal. 
" If this may not be, then the American people have 



284 Iniquity in High Places 

" degenerated ; they have lost their hold upon the his- 
" torical causes and the political habits which led to 
" the founding of our institutions and to the marvelous 
" growth and prosperity of our country. 

"We shall not believe that the gain of a few naval 
" battles over a weak and unprepared foe has power 
" to throw us into such enthusiasm or such madness 
" as to turn us permanently from the principles and 
" policies to which we owe our national existence, our 
" life and liberty, or that destiny, the divinity of 
" fatalists and materialists, can weaken our faith in the 
" God of justice, righteousness and love, who scorns 
" and thrusts far away those who, having the giant's 
" strength, use it to oppress or destroy the weak or 
" ignorant. 

"We have never looked upon ourselves as pre- 
" destined to subdue the earth, to compel other nations 
" with fire and sword to accept our rule. We have 
" always believed in human rights, in freedom and 
" opportunity, in education and religion, and we have 
" invited all men to come and enjoy these blessings in 
" this half of the world which God has given us ; but 
" we have never dreamed that they were articles to be 
" exported and thrust down unwilling throats at the 
" point of the bayonet. In past years we have always 
" sympathized with oppressed peoples ; but now the 
" American soldier who should never shoulder a gun 
" except in a righteous cause is sent 10,000 miles 
" across the ocean to shoot men whose real crime is 
" that they wish to be free, wish to govern themselves. 



Iniquity in High Places 285 

" To say that they are unfit for freedom is to put forth 
" the plea of the tyrant in all ages and all lands. The 
" enemies of liberty have never lacked for pretexts to 
"justify their wrongs; hut in truth at the root of all 
" wars of conquest there lies a lust for blood or for 
" gold. If the inhabitants of the Philippines came 
" gladly to throw themselves into our arms we should 
" refuse to do more than to counsel, guide and protect 
" them until they form themselves into a stable and 
" independent government. 

"A war of conquest is in contradiction with our 
" fundamental principles of government ; it is opposed 
" to all our traditions. The thought of ruling over 
•" subject peoples is repugnant to our deepest and 
" noblest sentiment. If it is our destiny to become an 
" empire, it is not our destiny to endure as a republic. 
" "When the American people resolve not to hold what 
" they never intended to take possession of they will 
" be able to solve the Philippine difficulty without 
" waste of time/' 

Sunderland on Imperialism. 

On January 15, 1899, the Rev. J. T. Sunderland 
delivered a sermon in the First Unitarian Church of 
Oakland, Cal., in which he said: 

"If a republic adopts imperialistic principles it ceases 
" to be a republic. It passes from the ranks of free- 
" dom to the ranks of tyranny. If it shall happen to 
" us that we shall adopt a colonial policy, or a system 
" of expansion, which shall be in any way imperialistic 



>86 Iniquity in High Places 

' in character, then just so far we shall have given np 
' onr republican methods and principles. 

"We went into the war with Spain with loud pro- 
' fessions of altruism. We claimed that the Cubans 
: were being treated in the most inhuman manner. 
' We would put an end to it. We would give them 
' their freedom. It was for this purpose that we 
' summoned the young men of the country into the 
' army. How soon the starving reconcentrados were 
' forgotten ! How soon did the taste of blood drive 
' humanitarian feelings out of all minds ! How soon 
' did greed of honor and greed of power and greed 
' of conquest come in and drag down the war to a 
' level of which we should have been ashamed if we 
' could have foreseen it at the beginning ! 

"When the war was over what did we do? Did we 
' treat our prostrate foe with the magnanimity which 
' it becomes a victorious nation to show to the van- 
' quished? Did we remember our declaration that we 
' had taken up arms not for conquest, but only to help 
'a suffering and struggling people to liberty? No, 
' on the contrary, we treated our fallen foe with a 
' severity which every nation of continental Europe 
' condemned, and which even England, our friend, 
' thought it necessary to apologize for. 

"Thus what began in altruism ended in purely 
' selfish, brute conquest. We set out to do something 
' noble. We told the world that we were going to do 
' something noble. We were the one nation of the 
' world whose republican principles and past history 



Iniquity in High Places 287 

made a noble deed of such a kind something to be 
expected. But instead of standing' erect to the end 
we bowed the knee to the Baal of unrighteousness, 
to the Baal of the lust for conquest and the lust for 
grasping foreign possessions'. From the lofty height 
on which we at first stood we descended to the level 
of England in her demands for submission from 
the conquered provinces of India. We descended 
to the low level that might makes right. 
"The treaty of peace should exhibit on our part a 
magnanimous spirit worthy of a great and powerful 
nation that believes in justice and liberty. The 
treaty of peace should demand no compensation for 
a war which we ourselves began in the name of 
humanity. The treaty should demand that the 
Philippines be made independent. We have no claim 
on them, not even the poor claim of conquest." 



War's Ultimate Cessation. 
By Rev. Thomas B. Gregory. 

"Lord Byron astonished and astounded all Europe 
" one day by declaring that he would 'mightily like to 
" know how it felt to be a murderer.' 

"The noble lord was perfectly honest. He really 
" desired to experience the feelings of the man whose 
" hands were red with his brother's blood. This does 
" not mean that Byron was a brute or a monster, but 
" only a thoroughbred human being of the masculine 
" gender, with the normal predilections of that strange 
" product of nature. 



288 Iniquity in High Places 

"Byron was, according to his own humble confes- 
sion, 'as mild a mannered man as ever cut a throat or 
" scuttled a ship,' and yet, because he was a thorough- 
" bred, he wanted to know 'how it felt to be a 
" murderer.' 

"Gifted as the author of 'Childe Harold' was, he 
" was a true lineal descendant of the 'ape and tiger 
" man' of the aboriginal times, when human nature 
" was one half passion and the other half ferocity. 

"But to leave the noble lord and come to humanity 
" in general, it may be said that in that humanity the 
" tiger is everywhere apparent. 

"The tiger loves blood. There is no sort of doubt 
" about it. The king of the jungle mightily enjoys 
" destruction for destruction's own sake. He is a 
" great hunter, and the bigger the game the greater 
" the enjoyment. 

"It is hard to say how long it has been since man 
" was a tiger, but to know history is to know that 
" there is still much of the tiger in man's composition. 

"Man, like the tiger, is a great hunter, and like the 
" tiger he enjoys hunting big game. The blood of the 
" grizzly, the blood of the elephant, the blood of the 
" moose, pleases him immensely ; but not so much as 
" the blood of that most royal game, Man. 

"In other words, man enjoys killing man. Enjoys 
" it, I say. There is no exhilaration like that of the 
" battlefield. Mountain air is a fair sort of tonic, 
" champagne is a decided quickener of the heart, love's 
" young dream is calculated to hasten the pulse some- 



Iniquity in High Places 289 

"what, but none of these are to be compared with the 
" game of war in which living human beings are pitted 
" against living human beings, the biggest game that 
" man can play. 

"The glory with which the ages have wreathed the 
" soldier's brow is the tribute to this indisputable fact 
" in human nature — a lamentable fact, a shameful, 
" disgraceful fact, but still a fact. 

"It is the tiger in us that all the culture and refine- 
" merit and religion of thousands of years have not 
" been able to eliminate — and will not be able to 
" eliminate, perhaps, for thousands of years to come. 

"The Hague has hardly more than begun its benef- 
" icent work. 

"If you don't believe that this is so, look around. 
" Behold the patent facts that on all sides challenge 
" our attention. 

"See all the 'civilized' peoples armed to the teeth, 
" ready at a moment's notice to spring at one another's 
" throats — nay, hoping that the chance to spring may 
" come, and come quickly. 

"Nine-tenths of the thing called 'patriotism' is 
" simply the couchant tiger in us, anxiously waiting 
" for the chance to lap its chops in blood. 

"Look at this most 'Christian' nation, 'God's Coun- 
" try,' with its high ideals and larger 'sympathies' — 
" how it is honeycombed with militarism ! See the 
" little boys all over the land, all dressed out in khaki, 
" with imitation guns on their shoulders, and imitation 
" sword-bayonets at their sides, marching to the sound 



290 Iniquity in High Places 

" of the drum — learning' to be professional murder- 
" ers ! 

"Peace Congresses are all right, but it will be a 
" long time before their beautiful dream is realized. 
"' With the nations so many armed camps, with the 
" President of the 'leading' nation 'killing things' just 
" for the sake of killing them, or, what amounts to 
" the same, just for the exhilaration of the hunt, it 
" looks rather discouraging for the 'Dove of Peace.' 

"Still, the word is — Courage. Truth and right can 
" afford to wait, and if need be, to wait a long time. 
" The tiger is dying slowly, but he is dying, and Peace 
" will yet sit crowned and triumphant above the ruins 
" that War has wrought." 



The following article is an incomparable gem. It 
is expressed in the most beautiful language. It is 
thoughtful and truthful in its theories and teachings. 
It is cheerful and hopeful in spirit. It is sound in its 
conclusions. If man has developed from a germ so 
minute, so insignificant that it would not at this day 
and date be visible to the naked eye, and if from this 
small beginning he has risen to his present standard 
of physical, mental and moral force, there must be in 
the order of the universe an irresistible tendency to 
progress that will carry the human race onward and 
upward forever and forevermore. 



Iniquity in High Places 291 

THE ASCENT OF LIFE. 



Max's Slow Progress from the Lower to the 

Higher Order. 
"The most important thing" in the world is life ; the 
" most interesting fact in the world is life ; the thing 
" most sought after in the world is life ; the thing least 
" understood in the world is life. 

"If we go out in the fields on a bright summer's day 
" and look at the world about us. we shall see all nature 
" teeming with life. We shall with difficulty find any- 
" thing that has not life in some form. If it has not 
" life in itself, it is helping to sustain life. The air 
" is filled with insects which you can see, and with 
" countless hosts of teeming life which you can not 
" see. The ground is covered with forms of plant 
" life in infinite variety. Turn up a spadeful and you 
" will find it the home of many other forms of life. 
"Even the rocks and ledges, most inhospitable hosts, 
" one would think, are covered with clinging lichens, 
" seeking with tiny rootlets their modest nourishment 
from crack and crevice. The water in the pond 
" teems with life. Place a drop of it beneath the 
" microscope, and you have a new world of wonders. 
" You will see vegetable life and animal life. You 
" will see stems of green weed, and transparent living 
" mechanism at w r ork. There is the tiny speck that 
" can sail through the eye of the smallest needle, as a 
" fly can sail under a railroad bridge. You may watch 
" its crystal armor, flashing with every varying tint, 



292 Iniquity in High Places 

its head glorious with the halo of its quivering cilia. 
You may see this mote 'gliding through the emerald 
' stems, hunting for its food, snatching at its prey, 
' chasing its mate, whirling in a mad dance to the 
' sound of its own music, the music of its happiness, 
' the exquisite happiness of living.' 
"Go to the great snow fields among the Alps and 
Sierras, or in Greenland ; if you know how to look 
for it you will find plenty of life even there — plants 
growing in arctic cold and snow, insects living a 
happy life in drifting snow and driving sleet ; birds 
and bears and fishes in the Arctic zone who love the 
frozen shores and icy depths ; butterflies, even, of 
peculiar kind, living where it is too cold for man 
to dwell. A block of ice from an iceberg or from 
one of the great glaciers of Alaska, or water from 
the hot springs of Colorado, will reveal still other 
forms of life. Even the damp, dark caves under the 
earth are the abode of creatures who love their dis- 
mal depths and could not live elsewhere. So, where- 
ever you may go, if your eye is trained to see it, you 
will find life in some form — above the earth, under 
the earth, at the tropics and at the poles — every- 
where there is life. Life is the thing most sought 
after in the world. All things that have life are seek- 
ing for more life; all things which have not life are 
taken up and builded into the structure of the things 
that have life. The rocks are attacked by water and 
frost and wave, and forced at last to crumble little 
by little and furnish soil. By and by tiny rootlets 



Iniquity in High Places 293 

" seize upon the dead rock fragments and trans- 
" form them into living plant to become a part of its 
" life. The fishes and sea plants take up the dead and 
" earthly material of the oceans, and build it into their 
" structure as a part of their life. All things that have 
" life are seeking more life — higher life. 

"All living things, so science tells us, have their own 
" place in the great procession of life that is forever 
" advancing onward and upward. We do not know 
" when the first living organisms appeared ; we do 
" not know how they appeared, just as we do not know 
" why they appeared. We only know that sometime, 
" somewhere in the childhood of the world, on the 
" strand of a summer sea, bathed by the ocean ripples 
" and the light waves they came into being. They 
" swam in the water, and by and by crept and crawled 
" in the sand. Then they lifted themselves up and 
" took to themselves wings and flew through the air, 
" uttering their joy in many kinds of song. 

"Then came the larger forms of life, roaming the 
" jungles and forests. And by and by came man — 
" man, the culmination of this development of animal 
" life ; at first only an animal himself, at last develop- 
" i-ng powers of thought which made him king over 
" all the world. Then he developed heart power, af- 
" fection, spiritual faculties, until he dreamed of God, 
" of another life, calling himself a child of the Eternal, 
" and lifting up his soul in worship. And through 
" the ages this race of ours has progressed, until there 
" came the literatures of the world, all the forms of 



294 Iniquity in High Places 

" beauty developed by art, the sounds of sweet song 
" that have attempted to utter the aspirations and hopes 
" and fears and sorrows of this mysterious human 
" heart. Thousands on thousands of years humanity 
" has climed up, until at last it reached the heights of 
" Homer, Pericles, Aristotle, Virgil, Goethe, Shakes- 
" peare — to the more magnificent heights of Moses, 
" Confucius, Isaiah, Socrates, Buddha and the mighty 
" Nazarene. Then came the great artists of Italy, the 
" great singers of Germany, the great scientists that 
" have taught us to know our dwelling-place and are 
" beginning to teach us to know ourselves. 

"So has man climbed slowly upward out of the low- 
" er order of life into the higher order of life. But 
" not yet has he outgrown all traces of the lower life. 
" There are still survivals of his animal ancestors in 
" his physical and mental make-up. His feet are still 
" in the dust, though his head is sometimes in the 
" clouds. There is the bear, the tiger, the fox, still 
" in human nature, not altogether outgrown. But 
" he is climbing up, always out of the animal into the 
" intellect, into the heart, into the afrectional nature 
" which is above selfishness. And the process of this 
" growth will go on forever as mankind rises to ever 
" higher heights of excellence." 



MN 6 1908 



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